Oil PSU executives have decided to strike work indefinitely from January 7 to seek higher wages. Oil Sector Officers’ Association (OSOA) in a release on Saturday said that it has resorted to this move after exhausting all channels.
Their slew of demands include 50% DA merger with effect from January 1, 2005 in line with merger of government of India employees in January 2006. The association claimed that on number of occasions, the petroleum ministry issued letters recommending its concerns but none of them were followed in letter and spirit. In fact the interim relief of merger of 50% DA with effect from January 1, 2007 vanishes because the department of public enterprise guidelines has failed to continue the benefit as it has done in case of government where 6th Pay Commission had recommended merger of 74% DA but government finally approved merger of 86%, in other words continuing the benefit of 50% DA merger.
In case of PUs they have not done so and as such the increase arising out of this 50% DA merger will have to be returned by the employees thereby negating the 30% increase which the government has given. This amounts to an effective loss to the tune of 12.22% of pre revised basic pay as on January 1, 2007. The Association said that the statement of the government that an entry level officers was drawing Rs 68,000 on January 1, 2007 was incorrect. Moreover, the Association argued that the officer was drawing only Rsv 27,540 of basic and DA that too at the maximum of the scale. Monthly emolument do not include Provident Fund, gratuity as these are part of terminal benefits.