Title - Union locks up railway engineers for 13 hours

KOLKATA/KHARAGPUR: Militant trade unionism triggered an all-night showdown at Kharagpur station as a group of railways employees locked up three mechanical engineers inside the diesel locomotive shed for over 13 hours till about 4.30am on Saturday.

The South Eastern Railway (SER) employees were protesting against the transfer of three of their colleagues. They claimed it was a punishment transfer for protesting against the high-handedness of a senior divisional mechanical engineer. However, SER officials in Kolkata said that transferred employees had manhandled an officer in charge of the diesel shed on July 17.

According to sources, trouble was brewing at the diesel loco shed ever since Rajnish Singh took over as SrDME (diesel) and took steps to regularize attendance. He installed a card punching machine to record the entry and exit time of employees.

On July 17, a large number of employees, led by Sukanta Mullick, secretary, SER Men's Union (SERMU), stormed into Singh's chamber and demanded that the rules be changed. They claimed that the card punching machine was faulty.

A scuffle ensued. The employees claimed that Mullick was pushed by Singh and hurt his head. Singh denied this. He claimed that the SERMU members started throwing nuts and bolts at him even as he was speaking to Mullick. While the officer was wearing a hard hat which protected his head, one of the missiles injured Mullick.

"The SrDME was rescued by police. He was asked to go on leave for a few days. When he returned in August, some employees stopped him from entering his office. "An independent inquiry found Mullick, Shyamal Sarkar and Ashis Mal guilty of manhandling Singh and the trio was transferred," an SER official in Kolkata said.

Soon after the transfer orders were served on Friday afternoon, the employees started agitating. Singh wasn't present at the loco shed then but nearly 70 employees locked up assistant mechanical engineers G S Manna, A K Tripathy and Paritosh Paul from around 3.30pm.

"Our job is not transferable and the orders are illegal. We demand that Singh be transferred. It was he who assaulted me. How can the railways take action against us? We didn't gherao the officers. We only held a demonstration when they were in the shed. On Tuesday, we shall meet the SER general manager on this issue," Mullick said.

The South Eastern Railway Officers' Association (SEROA) and the South Eastern Railway Promotee Officers' Association (SERPOA) have condemned the incident and demanded further punishment for the employees who confined the three engineers.