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Balco strike continues, unions to meet on Saturday

Workers unions of the newly-privatised aluminium-maker Balco decided on Friday to continue their two-month-old crippling strike, which has halted production at its plant, striking leaders said.

"We have decided that the strike will go on," M L Razak, secretary of a Bharat Aluminium Company trade union, told Reuters by telephone from Korba in Chhattisgarh, where the plant is located.

He said the unions would meet again on Saturday to discuss their response to a Supreme Court request to return to work after Balco's new management, Sterlite Industries, agreed to pay the workers for the time they were on strike and promised there would be no job cuts.

Nearly 7,000 workers launched the strike on March 3 fearing massive layoffs after the sale of the plant, India's first big-ticket privatisation in a decade of reforms.

The Supreme Court has asked the workers to comply with its request by May 8 when it meets again to consider the matter.

The workers began the strike at the plant in Korba after the federal government sold its 51 per cent stake in Balco to private metals firm Sterlite for Rs 5.51 billion.

The new management said on April 11 that losses due to the strike totalled Rs 1 billion.

Talks to settle the strike at the plant ended in a stalemate after trade unions demanded that the deal be scrapped. But the government said the sale was irreversible.

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