Letters: An unresolved issue

The Cabinet gave a green light to all 326 public sector undertakings to enter into wage negotiations with the recognised staff unions

The Union Cabinet has approved the revised salaries, gratuity, allowances and pension for the judges of the Supreme Court and high courts. In-service and retired judges will get arrears of revised pay and pension from January 1, 2016, the day from which the central government employees got the revision in their pay and pension based on the Seventh Central Pay Commission recommendations. The Cabinet also gave a green light to all 326 public sector undertakings to enter into wage negotiations with the recognised staff unions. Some of these undertakings have the practice of wage revision once in 10 years like the Government of India and some others once in five years, the like banking and insurance industries.

 
The government had advised the managements of financial institutions such as the Reserve Bank of India, LIC and Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) in June-July, 2016, to finalise the wage revisions due in 2017 without delay. Accordingly, the negotiations with some staff unions have already begun. This time around, it is hoped that the negotiating teams from staff will not settle and sign on the dotted lines until the managements agree to update of pension along with every wage revision and retrospectively from 1997, as has been the position with the working and retired employees of the central and many state governments. It is unfair that the pensioners and families of institutions such as the RBI and LIC, which are nationalised and in the public sector by some Acts of the Parliament, are being  discriminated against by the successive governments. It is the right time that the leaders of the negotiating teams try their best find resolution to more than a two-decade-old problem.  Ramanath Nakhate Mumbai

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