PSU general insurance employees turn lakhpatis with wage hike

CHENNAI - A majority of nearly 40,000 employees working in four government-run general insurance companies will go home Monday as lakhpatis, getting handsome arrears that range between Rs.100,000 and Rs.500,000 following a wage revision.

“All the employees are jubilant as this is the best wage revision ever negotiated. Most of the employees will be getting wage arrears of around Rs.100,000 and at the highest scale it will be around Rs.500,000. Apart from handsome monthly hike employees have got back the half-day casual leave facility that was lost earlier,” J. Gurumurthy, secretary of the All India Insurance Employees Association (AIIEA), told IANS.

Though the percentage of wage increase is officially pegged and declared at 17.5 percent - the rate that was given to bankers, union officials claim the visible increase is around 30 percent and on cost to the company basis the hike will be around 40 percent.

“It is a ‘growing’ wage revision as dearness allowance (DA) will go up by 36 slabs at 5.4 percent of the revised basic pay from this month onwards,” said Gurumurthy.

On the management agenda tied to the pay hike, he said: “There is no management agenda except may be one. Earlier clerical staff could be transferred only within 150 km of the existing work place. Now with the permission of General Manager the 150-km-radius could be extended further.”

According to Gurumurthy, all the government owned non-life insurers are logging good growth and they can pay well to retain talent.

He said improvements had also been made in the present pension scheme to include dependant unmarried/widowed/divorced daughters in the definition of “Family” till they are married/remarried so as to make them eligible to receive family pension.

Provision has also been made to include wholly dependent parents provided there is no widow or children eligible to receive pension.

The one negative feature, according to union officials, is the introduction of New Pension Scheme (NPS) for employees joining service after Jan 1, 2004.

“This measure will stop contribution to the existing pension corpus while risking the savings of the new recruits as their savings will be invested in stock market. There is no guarantee of the pension amount that NPS members would get whereas other pensioners are assured of around 50 percent of their last drawn pay as pension,” said Gurumurthy.