Ordnance Factory’s Employee To Go On 3 Days Strike

Nearly four lakh defence employee working with 41 ordnance factory and other production units will go on a massive three days protest from Jan 23 to Jan 25 against the Modi Government’s decision to allow 100% private participation in defence production.  The “All India Defence Employees Federation”( AIDEF) represents ordnance factories, 52 DRDO labs and various armed forces establishments. It is not the first time, employees federation are striking work in the past three years with multiple protests.

 As a part of its policy the centre has been progressively enhancing opportunities for the private sector. Though the policy decisions that have impacted the public sector in defence are: Declaring more than 200 defence items as non-core that allows defence forces to procure them directly from the market; Ordnance factories to give out at least 25% of their work order to private firms and mandating PSUs and so on.

Trade unions have already made multiple appeals to Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, former Defence Minister Arun Jaitley and former Congress president Sonia Gandhi, but nothing came out of it.

"Today, we just gave up lunch, but the government has been proactive and if the same continues we are planning a massive protest in January that will see all naval docks stop work, and the situation will be the same at the army and air force workshops for three days," All India Defence   Federation (AIDEF) general secretary C Srikumar said.

“However, when the government is taking away our jobs and handing keys to strategic areas to the private sector, there is nothing else we can think of to get the government’s attention,” another union leader working with the Director General of Quality Assurance (DGQA) said.