FEFSI places conditions to withdraw strike

CHENNAI: The Film Employees’ Federation of South India (FEFSI), a conglomeration of workers’ union representing 24 crafts involved in film making, on Tuesday asked the Tamil Film Producers’ Council (TFPC) to withdraw its earlier statement of not engaging FEFSI members for shooting and also restoring the earlier agreed wages for the former to withdraw its strike.
However, some of the producers - of about 6-7 Tamil films - went ahead with their shooting schedules on Tuesday, ignoring the strike call given by FEFSI. The Tamil Film Producers’ Council said shooting for another 3-4 films are expected to commence on Wednesday.
FEFSI, however, claimed no shooting for Tamil films took place on Tuesday. The shooting schedules for nearly 40 films were affected due to the strike, it claimed.
“The shooting for about 40 films was affected and nearly 10,000 workers, who were employed till yesterday, did not get any work on Tuesday. We wanted to avoid such a situation from the beginning, but TFPC was not coming forward,” R K Selvamani, president, FEFSI, told reporters here.
According to him, the previous office bearers of TFPC, under S Thanu, had agreed on the wages to be paid to workers from different crafts. However, the present office bearers have on their own decided to bring in changes to that and send out a circular. “Decisions cannot be taken based on emotions. As a result of the strike, about 37 films, including Rajinikanth’s Kaala, are affected,” he said.
“Even now, let the TFPC withdraw its statement of not engaging FEFSI workers and also restore the earlier agreed wages, FEFSI workers will resume work,” he said. “Let them agree on one or two conditions. Work will resume. We can sit and thrash out other issues,” Selvamani said.
But, TFPC begs to differ. “We never said – we will not work with FEFSI workers. We are not against the workers, but only against some of the unreasonable conditions laid down by them. Even today, shooting for about 6-7 films happened in different places in the city and we are working with those interested to work with us,” S Kathiresan, Secretary, TFPC told TOI. Shooting for films featuring Vishal, Vijay Antony and Arvind Swamy, among others, progressed as scheduled, he said.