Some of the points that lead to strained industrial relations on Indian Railways are: indiscriminate surrender of posts without consulting the organized labour, non-creation of new posts for additional assets and new services, insistence of matching money value for creation of new posts, non-compliance of norms laid down by Railway Board for determining the requirement of staff, heavily over burdening of work force in coaching maintenance, signaling and telecom department, electrical department, diesel/electric loco sheds and track machine organisations, large number of vacancies in safety and operational categories, imparting of training facilities, especially pre-promotional training to all employees, large number of employees made to work 12 hours a day, and running staff being put to heavy stress and strain by longer hours of duty and so on.

Other points relevant to straining of industrial relations are lack of trade unions in the Railway Production Units, which could help the workers to exercise their trade union rights and participate in the PNM, non-implementation and undue delay in implementation of the agreements arrived at in the meetings of Departmental Councils and in the meetings of PNM, which operate at different levels and tiers. As has been the case, PNM meetings are not held frequently, as prescribed, in several Railway Divisions. Even in the case of All India Railway Protection Force Association, the PNM meetings are not held regularly at Zonal and Divisional levels. At the Railway Board level as well, such meeting is not held regularly, according to the official sources.

According to the Union Ministry of Labour, Railway disputes constitute six per cent of total workers' disputes in the Government of India. RPF Association has also ventilated its grievances that RPF authorities do not implement PNM decisions and Railway Board orders. According to the two Federations of unions at the apex, All India Railway men's Federation (AIRF) and National Federation of Indian Railway men (NFIR), the much touted Participation of Railway Employees in Management (PREM), started with a big fanfare since May 1, 1994, has become a sort of ritual and there has been no real participation of employees before issues of significance are decided. The two Federations have stated that the decisions regarding outsourcing of certain functions, Public Private Partnership and such other matters had no prior involvement of PREM.

Some other factors that impact industrial relations adversely relate to under utilization of staff welfare funds of the order of Rs.50 crores in 2005-06 and Rs.57 crores in 2006-07, under utilization of staff quarter budget by Rs.46 crores in 2003-04 and in the range of Rs.13 crores to Rs.29 crores in the subsequent financial years, allocation of Staff Benefit Fund for recreation facilities to senior and supervisory officials being isproportionate to their strength compared to the allocation in this respect for the rest of the staff, and lesser allocation than the requirements for Corporate Welfare Plan for maintenance and improvement of staff quarters and colonies.

Against the annual requirement of Rs.500 crores, total funds allocated under this plan in 2007-08 was Rs.344 crores, resulting in dissatisfaction among employees, in view of the fact that staff quarters in most of the Railway colonies are in dilapidated conditions and not livable.

Still other contentious issues debilitating industrial relations on the railways are: demands for Central hospitals in the seven newly created zones in line with the earlier nine established zones, extension of fully equipped mobile hospital from one in each zone to one in each of the Divisions, appointment of full time doctors for health care centres, dispensaries and hospitals for Indian System of Medicines as well as for popularizing these systems, and making Kolkata Metro Rail Hospital, which is equipped with the latest medical gadgets, fully operational by appointing medical and para medical staff.

The other important demand of the railway work force is to set up one professional college each in all the 16 zones to meet the specific requirements of the railways. At present, there are 367 educational institutions across the country on Indian Railways comprising one degree college, senior secondary, secondary, middle and primary schools.

Unless the Railways consider these vital issues germane to enlist willing cooperation of its employees to maximize their productivity with attendant job satisfaction, the Indian behemoth is likely to revert to inefficiency. Presently, it is buoyed by its massive turn around not because of any special marketing efforts but by mere economics where it is not viable for the trade, commerce and industry to transport their products and services by other modes of transportation like the roadways, which are six time costlier and hazardous to environment. Imagine the scenario that with 60-90 tonnes of heavy haul trucks plying on national high ways and express ways in the days to come, the current edge that Indian Railways is enjoying would certainly go away, notwithstanding the upcoming Dedicated Freight Corridors.

It is time the Railways ensured that the industrial relations mechanism functioned efficiently and meaningfully at all levels including the RPF by adhering to set periodicity of meetings and time bound implementation of decisions taken at such meetings lest disenchanted railway work force should be proving disastrous to the current turn around of Indian Railways. It is time the authorities ensured that norms set for a sound industrial relations were sustained without let up!#