GOVT ANNOUNCES 12% WAGE HIKE FOR WORKERS OF PSU GENERAL INSURERS

For employees of four public sector general insurance companies, the Finance Ministry has announced an average 12% pay increase beginning in August 2017.

A gazette notification dated October 14, 2022 stated, "This Scheme may be called the General Insurance (Rationalisation of Pay Scales and other Conditions of Service of Officers) Amendment Scheme, 2022."

It added that officers and workers will receive arrears for five years and that this wage revision would take effect on August 1, 2017, and that it would apply to people who had worked for these companies. The next revision, which is due in August 2022, will take the form of variable compensation based on both the company's and the employee's performance, it stated.

Unions oppose to the requirement that pay be based on both their own and the company's performance. 

After waiting 64 months, we have serious concerns about how the wage revision was handled. Given the number of government programmes us employees participate in, linking pay to performance seems illogical, according to Trilok Singh, general secretary of the General Insurance Employees' All India Association (GIEAIA).

He added that state-owned insurance company employees, not those from the private sector, are what make all government programmes successful, thus there is no equal playing field for public sector insurance companies. Data from year to year shows that the private sector has lagged, he continued. Unions are not opposed to reforms, Singh emphasised, but they should be implemented with consideration of the public sector nature of these organisations.

The General Insurance Business (Nationalisation) Amendment Act, which was announced by the government last year, will enable it to reduce its ownership of state-owned general insurers to below 51%. An official source estimated that the combined wage bill for New India Assurance, National Insurance, Oriental Insurance, and United India Insurance will be close to Rs 8,000 crore due to the 12% raise plus five years of arrears.

Every five years, wages are revised for public sector banks and insurance companies. The following pay raise for insurance company employees is scheduled to begin in August 2022.