Hindu reported that trade unions have demanded a whopping 50% pay hike by Coal India Ltd in the forthcoming National Coal Wage Agreement-IX. The five year pact will be brought into effect from July 1st 2011. CIL effected a 24% salary hike in the last edition of wage pact.

According to the CIL sources, opening the discussion at the two-day joint bi-partite consultative committee meeting at Bhubaneswar between December 11 and 12, the trade union nominees demanded 50% hike against 10% offered by CIL in NCWA-IX.

A CIL source told Business Line that “Considering the economic downturn and the hardship faced by consumers, we requested the trade unions to accept 10 per cent hike in NCWA-IX. Unions, though appreciated the challenges before the company, felt that it would not be possible for them to accept anything below 24 per cent hike, as offered in NCWA-VIII.”

The unions it may be recalled forced the coal major to fork out INR 21,000 festival bonus to each of nearly 363,000 workers earlier this year. The deal had cost the company nearly INR 145 crore more than the initial provisioning of INR 620 crore. CIL initially offered INR 17,000 each, against INR 15,000 each in 2010.

Meanwhile, the demanded wage hike may also fall short of a lump sum provisioning of INR 7,000 each per month as effected by the coal major beginning July-September 2011.

(Sourced from BL)