Several employees’ unions today expressed dissatisfaction over the Union Cabinet’s approval to the recommendations of the Sixth Pay Commission. While the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) claimed the recommendations accepted were “not fully satisfactory”, the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) resented the government’s decision terming it “totally inadequate, disappointing and discriminatory towards lower-level employees”.
The Confederation of Central Government Employees and Workers (CCGEW), meanwhile, dubbed the Cabinet approval of the recommendations as “anti-employee and pro-officer”. The Joint Platform for Action (JPA) of the Government and Associate Services Employees’ Organisations said that the decision of the central government on pay commission recommendations remained “contrary to the wishes of the government employees”.
Reacting sharply to the approval of the recommendations, AITUC General Secretary Gurudas Das Gupta said the Cabinet approval was “skilfully managed to put up the show of the government of benefitting the existing employees under the cover of privatisation, reduction of manpower and outsourcing”.
“Though the pay-fixation formula and the rate of increment have marginally improved, it is still less than what was demanded by the staff unions,” Gupta said while taking serious exception to several recommendations of the pay panel approved by the government. “We are not happy at all. The major issue of concern raised by the staff unions regarding continuation of the recruitment to the class IV posts in the central services in future have not been addressed by the government,” Gupta added.
Gupta claimed that the approval of the recommendations has only widened the disparity in the income of the lowly paid government employees and the highly paid ones. The decision of the government to pay arrears in instalments (40 per cent this year and 60 per cent next year) was against the recommendations of the pay commission, Gupta said and demanded that the entire amount of arrears be paid to the employees immediately in cash.
Meanwhile, CITU president MK Pandhe said, “The decision of the government is disappointing so far as employees are concerned as none of their major suggestions have been accepted.” “The government has failed to concede the demands of the unions to address their grievances with regard to wider disparity in pay scale between lower-level and higher-level employees,” he added.
