Revised wages to cost CIL Rs 600 crore

The hike in salary of employees in central public sector enterprises (CPSEs) will account for an additional wage burden of around Rs 600 crore for the 16,000 officer-grade employees of Coal India Limited (CIL).

Currently the wage burden these employees is around Rs 1200 crore.

With a hike recommended between 50 and 300 per cent at the entry and highest levels CIL's wage burden may go up to Rs 1800 crore.

Though CIL has been awarded the Navratna status, the issue of wage hike of its employees in weak subsidiaries like ECL, BCCL and CCL is still hanging fire. The government has recommended lower fitments on the basic salaries of the employees for weak subsidiaries.

CIL chairman Partha S Bhattacharya said, "We are fully in limits and geared up to carry the additional burden of around Rs 600 crore. This additional incidence is nothing compared to range of business CIL does. The wage hike will be effective from January 1, 2007".

Conservative estimates and back of the envelope calculations suggest that the increase at the entry level of E1 and E2 officers could be around 60 per cent while between E 3 and E 5 levels it would be about 30-35 per cent. At the higher levels in the M1 to M3 grades the increase may even be higher with the director levels commanding a hike of around 300 per cent.

Coal India, however, has plans of completing the circle of wage hike along with its workers.

According to Bhattacharya, “workers are also awaiting a wage hike through the national coal wage agreeement - VIII. Once it is agreed upon whether the NCWA wage hike will be effective for five or ten years I will also start paying them".

JBCCI, the joint platform of workers and coal management staff will shortly deliberate on the NCWA-VIII issue.