Sixth Pay Commission fixes minimum wage
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SPECIALCORRESPONDENT
The Sixth Central Pay Commission (CPC) which submitted its report to the government on Monday has fixed the minimum wage at Rs 5740. The Central government employees had demanded the fixation of minimum wage as per the norms formulated by the Fifteenth ILC which works out to Rs 10,000 per month. The computation has been rejected by the Commission on untenable and unsustainable grounds. Had the minimum wage been computed on the basis of the norms laid down by the Fifth CPC i.e. the percentage increase of the Net National Product over a period of ten years, which the government had accepted in 1997, the minimum should have been determined at Rs 7400. Thus the minimum wage determined by the Sixth CPC is even less than what had been recommended by the Fifth CPC and accepted by the then government as fair and reasonable. The Pay Commission has gone on record to state that no comparison could be made to the wages obtaining in the Public Sector Undertaking. The first four scales of pay suggested by the Fifth CPC for the Group D Employees of the government have been now removed. The existing employees in these grades are to be moved to Group C cadres through a process of training thereby indicating that the unskilled functions in the governmental sector would be contractorised or outsourced. On this specious plea the Commission has flaunted that the minimum wage in the governmental sector would hereafter be Rs 6660 and thus calculated the ratio between the minimum and maximum wages at 1:12. The real ratio between the minimum and maximum wages have been raised from 1:11.76(determined by the Fifth CPC) to 1:15.68. While huge rise in emoluments have been provided to the senior officers of the government, the Group B,C and D employees have been totally neglected. The Commission has recommended to withdraw the benefit of merger of DA granted to the government employees in 2004. The new fixation of pay in the revised scales of pay will be by disregarding this benefit. The proposed 40 per cent fitment benefit will thus be reduced to 28 per cent, when the actual fixation takes place. The Grade pay concept has been introduced as a prologue to the introduction of a performance related pay system without specifying any objective yardstick to measure the performance. The rate of increase has been pegged down to the level of 2.5 per cent much below even what is obtaining presently under the Fifth CPC dispensation. Another suggestion is to replace the existing adhoc and productivity linked bonus with performance related incentive. The Commission has inter alia suggested for the reduction of holidays from 17 to 3 without compensatory increase in the number of restricted holidays. The present health care system under the CGHS is to be replaced by the Medi-insurance for the new entrants. The pension scheme presently in vogue for those who are recruited prior to 1.4. 2004 has not been extended to the new entrants while they are perforce to contribute 10 per cent of their salary for the new contributory Pension scheme. No doubt the Commission has kept its promise of submitting its report within the prescribed time frame and recommended that its suggestion should be made effective from 1 January, 2006. To give impetus to the policy of privatisation and contractorisation, the Commission has recommended for Corporatisation of Indian Railways, which employs the largest number of central government employees and for total outsourcing of all the Group D functions across the board in all Central establishments. In the circumstances, the central government employees are constrained to reject the retrograde recommendations of the Commission and demand that the government renegotiate wage revision issue afresh bilaterally. Further, the Confederation has called upon the central government employees throughout the country to organize demonstration on 26th March, 2008 to register its emphatic protest over the totally unacceptable recommendations of the Sixth CPC. It also calls upon the sister organisations to unitedly fight to bring about a decent wage settlement for the central government employees.
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