After a month long strike across textiles mills in June, both Ahmedabad Textile Mills Association (ATMA) and Textile Labour Association (TLA) have ended negotiations amicably and agreed upon productivity-based wage hikes.
According to Chintan Parikh, president of ATMA, it was agreed by both the parties that the wage increase should be structured in such a fashion that the net take home wages on annual basis is maximised, compared to the workers availing the disposable liquidity only in terms of terminal benefits.
"Resultantly, even if the same percentage of increase in the basic wages were to be offered by all the mills, the range of increase in wages would vary between as low as Rs 700 to as high as Rs 2200 to different sets of workers within the same mill," said Parikh. Earlier, TLA had insisted for a single similar amount of increase spread over all the workers across mills.
"However, even after equalization of the wage increase among the workers using the same yard stick of similar percentage increase, because of the inherent differences in the structure of different mills, even after computing the increase in wages, in terms of equal wage increases turn out to be different among different mills," said Parikh.
Eventually, ATMA and TLA have decided that the latter will have to make individual wage increase agreements with each mill, depending upon the computations which were valid for a particular mill. "Each ATMA member mill, now based on the above platform of discussion, will conclude their wage increase agreements with their respective workers as soon as possible in the coming few days. This will be followed by appropriate awards for each mill from the labour court," Parikh added.
