RAILWAYS- Agitation by Locomen

warned against any cut in wage levels and emoluments as had already been achieved by any category of workers. It had emphatically laid down that not a single paisa must he taken away from any category of employees in the name of rationalisation of wages. It had recommended that future wage revisions and adjustments should aim to narrow wage differentials and that this too should be clone through the processes of collective bargaining under certain broad guidelines which, the government might lay down. Therefore, what the present government hay done in the case of the LIC employees has nothing at all to do with the recommendation of the Bhoothalingam committee. Instead the action harks back audaciously to the strong arm measures of the Emergency, all in the name of 'demand management' and 'holding the prices' The government thus claims it has to take stiff measures against workers' claims to higher wages and DA in order to case the inflationary pressures in the economy and cut costs of production. The employers in any case have been urging these measures since the very formation of the present government, even reminding it of its achievements of the Emergency in this respect and ascerting the need for its repetition for reviving economic activity.