ROURKELA: Ahead of the upcoming meet of Board of Directors of Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL), the executives of Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP) have upped the ante against SAIL to demand better pay scale for junior officers and pension for all.
While the RSP Executives Association (RSPEA) is fighting for the cause of RSP executives, another unit - the Steel Executives’ Federation of India (SEFI) is pursuing the same demands for the benefit of executives of all nine steel plants of SAIL. Above 600 executives of RSP, led by RSPEA president Bimal Bisi, on Friday took out a candle march at Ambagan to protest unresolved issues lingering for a decade. The demands include scale upgradation for E1 level junior managers (JMs) and E2 level assistant managers (AMs) of RSP, pay protection for junior executives (JEs) of 2008 and 2010 batches and implementation of pension scheme for all executives.
If the Union Steel Ministry and SAIL agree to the demands, this would benefit 500 JMs and AMs, about 400 JEs and above 1,800 executives of RSP. This would also come as a boon for about 4,000 JMs and AMs, 2,000 JEs and about 15,000 executives. RSP sources informed that at present the JMs at E1 level and AMs at E2 level of RSP get a starting main basic pay of Rs 20,600 and Rs 24,900 respectively, but in other Maharatna PSUs their counterparts get 24,900 and Rs 29,100 respectively.
RSPEA president Bimal Bisi said, pay revision of JEs was last implemented in 2007, but that of the workers’ was revised every five years and after 2012 the workers’ pay scale exceeded that of JEs. However, after pressure from political leadership, six months back SAIL had given ad hoc lump sum pay to JEs to close the gap with workers, but the ad hoc payments were not actually included in the main basic pay and Dearness Allowance.
The demands of RSPEA seeking revised pay scales for JMs, AMs and JEs and pension scheme for all executives from January 2017 are legitimate, said Bisi. It is unfortunate that the pension scheme is pending since 2007 and many executives have died in the last one decade without availing pension benefits, said Bisi.
With the SAIL Board set to meet on November 24, RSPEA would decide its future course of action in consultation with SEFI.