Coal India Ltd Chairman, Mr N C Jha, today described the reported strike call by coal unions on October 10 as “unfortunate and unreasonable”. A day's strike costs CIL nearly Rs 120 crore in terms of production loss. “There is no notice for strike as yet. If it so happens, it would be unfortunate and would hurt the company's interests in this difficult year when production growth has stalled,'' Mr Jha told newspersons on the sidelines of an energy conference organised by the Mining, Geological and Metallurgical Institute of India.

Coal unions threatened to go on strike in October despite CIL's promise to pay a higher bonus of Rs 17,000 to each worker against Rs 15,000 paid to each last year. The promised payment would have increased CIL's outgo on bonus from Rs 556 crore in 2010 to Rs 620 crore crore in 2011.

The unions started their negotiation with a wish list of Rs 50,000 bonus to each worker, to be scaled down to approximately Rs 23,000 each. Mr Jha described the unions' demand as “unreasonable” and beyond the capacity of the company.

Earlier, addressing the conference, Mr Jha urged the mining industry to take adequate social measures and make the people in the mining asset-bearing areas stakeholders in the process to ease the growing opposition against land acquisition.

“Please do your mining business honestly so that we can improve the standard of living of the people living in mining asset bearing areas, so that they offer us land willingly,” he said.

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