7th Central Pay
Commission report a big disappointment
November 21,2015,
02.13 AM IST | | THE HANS INDIA
The CPC has not taken some important
issues into consideration, like wage revisions in other sectors like banks,
insurance, some State governments etc., where the revision takes place once in
every 5 years. For example, wage revision took place in the erstwhile AP State
and a fitment benefit of 39% was given with effect from 01.7.08. Again in the
divided States of AP &TS, a revision took place with effect from 17.7.2013
to benefit the employees to the tune of 43%. Therefore, in a span of 10 years,
the increase in the wages is 82% by way of two wage revisions. These aspects
were not taken into account while arriving at the fitment benefit of the Central
government employees by the 7th CPC
The leaders and the employees of the Central government are
expressing their strong resentment and fuming over the unscientific way of
fixation of the Minimum Wage by the Seventh Pay Commission. As a matter of
fact, the 5th CPC granted interim relief twice besides finally recommending 20%
fitment. Of course, the Central government service associations, after
negotiations with the government. achieved a fitment of 40%. Altogether, the
benefit to the employees by virtue of 5th CPC was 60% of their basic pay.
The 6th CPC, on its own, recommended
40% fitment but actually the benefit to the employees worked out to be 50%-80%
in the basic pay. Usually, while working out its recommendations,
successive CPCs kept in mind the long gap between the pay revisions apart from
reviewing the other issues. The CPCs should also keep in mind the inflationary
trends and the resultant depreciated real value of the salaries of the
employees.
The memorandum submitted by the JCM
Staff Side to the 7th CPC has discussed many issues and the problems faced by
the Staff. It collected prices of various commodities, from all the major
cities, and requested the CPC to apply Dr Aykroid Formula while arriving at the
minimum wage. The Staff Side worked out the Minimum Wage to 26,000 pm by
applying the Formula, by collecting the prices of essential commodities from
the market. With this, the multiplication factor to be applied to each employee’s
basic pay comes to 3.7.
The 7th CPC has appreciated the
scientific base of Dr Aykroid Formula, but while taking prices of the essential
commodities from the market, it adopted an unrealistic approach. For
example, the prices of rice and dal were taken as Rs 25.92 and Rs 97.84
respectively, while the actual market prices are more than Rs 48 and Rs 200
respectively. This unrealistic approach is only to recommend minimum wage
at a lower stage. The CPC has decided the Minimum Wage to be only 18,000.
To fix the minimum wage at much lower level, the CPC has taken the prices
of the items covered by Dr Aykroid Formula at much below the market rates,
resulting in the reduction of multiplication factor from 3.7 to 2.57.
Increase in the salaries of employees
means the increase in basic pay, but not allowances like HRA, CCA, transport
allowance etc. It is incorrect to take increase in these allowances into
consideration while projecting pay revision benefit. Considering all these
issues, the employees are totally dissatisfied and fuming over the
recommendations. The CPC has not taken some important issues into
consideration, like wage revisions in other sectors like banks, insurance, some
State governments etc., where the revision takes place once in every 5 years.
For example, wage revision took place
in the erstwhile AP State and a fitment benefit of 39% was given with effect
from 01.7.08. Again in the divided States of AP &TS, a revision took place
with effect from 17.7.2013 to benefit the employees to the tune of 43%.
Therefore, in a span of 10 years, the increase in the wages is 82% by way of
two wage revisions. These aspects were not taken into account while arriving at
the fitment benefit of the Central government employees by the 7th CPC.
The Central government employees
strongly believe that only with the intervention of the Central government this
sort of unscientific recommendations was made by the 7th CPC. It is
unfortunate, when the State governments, whose resources are limited, can
afford to pay their employees 37% of their revenue expenditure, the Central
government with its vast resources is not coming forward to give a reasonable
fitment benefit once in 10 years.
As a matter of fact, the expenditure
towards wages of the Central government employees comes to below 7% of the
revenue expenditure. The employees hope that the Central government, which
gives concessions in several ways to the corporate, business houses,
capitalists of the country, should discuss with the associations and unions and
decide the wage revision and other service conditions in a scientific manner
and do justice to the several lakhs of employees and their families. (The
writer is the General Secretary, Confederation of Central Government
Employees and Workers, AP & TS)
By V Nageswara Rao
General Secretary, CCGEW,
A.P&Telangana
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