On my way to office today, I came across these ‘striking’ employees. With my trusty digicam with me, it struck me to take some pics for your reading pleasure. The pics were taken at the Aeronautical Defence Establishment (ADE) entrance.

As per today’s Hindu,

The Defence Civilian Employees Union will strike work in protest against what, it said, was the Government’s failure to solve the issues raised through the Charter of Demands placed by the All India Defence Employees Federation. All the unions affiliated to the federation in Bangalore will take part the strike…

The report also states that,

The general strike in the State as part of the nation-wide call given by the trade unions may not affect normal life but it will only strike a chord of sympathy in a fast changing labour force

I’m not sure about that sympathy part. For one, such strikes or bandhs, call it what you will ( the trade unions say that “this is a strike, not a bandh”) are viewed as a nuisance that cause disruption of services which the common man is dependent on. Secondly, all these calls for strikes etc are only a pointer in the direction that the world is indeed turning flat, as a famous author said recently, and much of all this churn has got to do with competition, market forces, globalisation and shifting of economies from manufacturing to services. The sooner everybody and his uncle reads the big picture, remedial measures ie. learning new skills, encouraging new industries, for example, can be taken. Unfortunately, the powers that rule (temporarily too!) being themselves myopic by nature, fail to act. Result? Disgruntled workforce(s). Sad state of affairs, really.