ROURKELA: In line with SAIL’s ambitious plan to be a leaner and cost-competitive organisation, the Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP) has been asked to prepare a five-year ‘strategic workforce roadmap’ (SWR) from 2025-26.
Under the initiative, RSP’s manpower is likely to be pruned to 5,000-6,000 from the present 11,800 employees comprising nearly 9,350 non-executives, 1,700 executives, 780 mines employees along with 12,000 contractual workers.
In a letter to the director-in-charge of RSP Alok Verma on February 11, director (personnel) of SAIL KK Singh said latest developments in the steel sector has created the urgent need to work out long-term strategies to enhance workforce efficiency with adoption of advanced models, leverage technology and utilise strategic outsourcing to become a leaner and cost-competitive organisation.
The letter strongly urged the RSP to submit the SWR by February 28 and said any annual recruitment budget should be in accordance with the roadmap.
Citing its high manpower base, SAIL said it has 53,575 regular employees and 61,000 contract workers in works and mines areas. Its labour productivity of 604 tonne crude steel (TCS)/man/year is much lower compared to industry peers in domestic sector operating at 1,400 TCS/man/year.
SAIL has the highest manpower cost at more than 11 per cent of total expenditures against around two per cent of industry peers and its ‘per tonne manpower cost’ is much higher than the industry benchmarks.
With its ambitious expansion and modernisation plan, SAIL targets to achieve production capacity of 35 MTPA by 2031-32 with labour productivity of 1,200 TCS/man/year.
Accordingly, SAIL has prescribed RSP to adopt a balanced mix of permanent and contractual workforce on fixed-term, project year-wise contractual employees for operational needs, cap ratio of regular to contractual employees to 1:1, and take up best practices, automation and skill development initiatives.
In view of the RSP’s plan for upcoming capacity expansion to 9.3 MPTA from present 4.5 MTPA, the plant has been advised to align its manpower planning with the anticipated increase in capacity and assess future skill requirement for incorporation into workforce projections.
Incidentally, RSP’s regular non-executive employees’ strength used to be around 29,000 during 1995. It was cut short to nearly 18,000 by 2010 and now stands at 9,350.
Reliable sources said for optimisation of manpower, SAIL is likely to introduce another VRS scheme to downsize the total employees’ strength to 5,000-6,000. The last VRS had come during 2019.
President of BMS-affiliated Rourkela Ispat Karkhana Karmachari Sangh (RIKKS) Himanshu Sekhar Bal said under the manpower downsizing plan, it appears that in net effect RSP’s total strength would be cut down to little over 5,000.
He said unlike private steel makers whose prime objective remains profit, the RSP as a PSU has a social commitment for generating employment while creating wealth for the nation. “We apprehend gross violations of all laid down norms in implementation of SAIL’s plan and increased possibilities of fatal mishaps at work sites,” Bal added.