Employees of the public sector undertaking are asking to dissolve the ‘Affordability’ clause issued by Department of Public Enterprises. The affordability clause incorporated by the Department of Public Enterprises (DPE) during August 2017 have denied employees their pay hikes.
The employees of public sector undertakings in the steel sector have written to the centre asking for full benefits to be accrued as per recommendations of the third Pay Revision Committee (PRC).
According to the ‘Affordability’ clause under the DPE guidelines, the additional financial impact of the hike in wage in the year of implementation should not exceed twenty per cent of the average Profit Before Tax of the last three financial years preceding the year when it is implemented.
No fitment benefit of pay revision will be implemented in the Central Public Sector Enterprises (CPSEs) where the additional financial impact of the revised pay package is more than 40 per cent of the average PBT of last three financial years.
“We strongly feel that PBT of three years cannot be a true indicator of a company’s performance,” a letter from the Steel Executives Federation of India (SEFI) said. The SEFI represents around 25,000 officers working in Steel sector PSUs such as Steel Authority of India (SAIL), Rashtriya Ispat Nigam (RINL) and MECON.
The proposed wage hike will cover employees of board level executives, below board level executives and Non-unionised supervisors.
“There has been some setback in financial year 2015-2016 which has adversely affected the prospect of pay revision for executives of SAIL. It will be a travesty of justice if the executives of SAIL and other steel sector PSUs are denied the full benefits of third pay revision solely on the basis of performance of one year (2015-2016) while ignoring the overall performance of the preceding years,” the letter said.
According to officials in the know, the average PBT of the last three financial years (preceding the implementation of the third pay revision) were FY 2014-2015, 2015-2016 and 2016-2017, was negative for SAIL and thus the salary revision for Executives of SAIL could not be implemented.
These provisions have irked employees who said that wage revisions come at a gap of 10 years so it is unfair to assess the eligibility while considering the performance of just three years. The employees also say that the losses incurred by SAIL are purely attributed to external factors such as adverse global conditions.
