CIL trade unions to negotiate contractual workers' wage revision in a month

Kolkata: After an average 20 percent wage hike for Coal India Ltd’s 2.98 lakh permanent workers, its trade unions are set for negotiating a wage revision for contractual workers and a committee for this is likely to be set up in a month, a trade union leader said on Sunday. [caption id=“attachment_4191453” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. Reuters[/caption] After a long negotiation, Coal India management and workers’ unions had signed the Memorandum of Agreement for National Coal Wage Agreement and this would be effective for five years till 30 June, 2021. “We signed the wage agreement for permanent workers on 10 October. It was mentioned in the agreement that wage of contractual workers would be revised and a committee will be formed for that purpose. I think the proposed committee is likely to be formed in a month’s time and then, the committee will start deliberating,” All India Coal Workers’ Federation General Secretary DD Ramanandan told IANS. He said a preliminary discussion would be held on 14 December for the purpose. The state-run miner had said the wage hike for permanent workers’ would have an estimated average annual impact of Rs 5,667 crore and it had made provisions for the wage revision. The proposed committee will have representations from all the trade unions and also from the management, Ramanandan said. However, the miner’s bottomline has been under pressure in the last few quarters and it had reported close to 40 percent fall in its consolidated net profit to Rs 368.88 crore in the quarter ended on 30 September, 2017 as compared to Rs 612.44 crore in the corresponding quarter last fiscal.