Wage disparity fuels resentment among Tamil Nadu government employees

By Nivedha Selvam  |  Express News Service  |   Published: 17th October 2017 08:46 AM  |  

COIMBATORE: Implementing the recommendations of pay commissions has always been a tightrope walk for State governments. On one hand, governments have to ensure that the revision does not fall foul of public perception, while on the other, the pay hike needs to have a palliative effect on civil servants. The recent protests that ended with the State government giving its nod for implementing the Seventh Pay Commission (SPC) recommendations failed to cut ice with government employees, who claim that their main demand for parity with Central government staff has gone largely unresolved.

A case in point is the disparity in salary hike. While the compensation of the Central government employees was raised by 24.95 per cent, their State counterparts received a 20 per cent hike, giving wider currency to the seething discontent. PK Elamaran, State president of Tamil Nadu Teachers Association, finds fault with the Sixth Pay Commission recommendations for the disparity. “We used to get pay equal to Central government employees till the Sixth Pay Commission recommendations were implemented. There were quite a few anomalies in the recommendations, leading to disparity.”

Though the State took the initiative of setting right the anomalies by forming a one-man commission under the then industries secretary Rajiv Ranjan, the 80-odd orders passed by the government on the panel’s recommendation bad been insufficient to bridge the gap, he pointed out.One of the victims of the Sixth Pay Commission recommedations were secondary grade teachers. A Mayavan, State co-ordinator of JACTTO-GEO, says that while the State government sanctioned RS 2,800 as grade pay for secondary grade teachers, it was `4,200 for the Central government teachers. “We were counting on the anomaly to be rectified with the Seventh PC. However, the gap only widened,” Mayavan says. 

While the quantum of work undertaken by State and Central government employees has remained more or less the same, the gap in pay has been increasing, says S Kumar, Coimbatore district secretary of JACTO-GEO. “While the minimum wage of a government employee in the State has been raised to `15,700 from `6,100, it pales in comparison to the `21,000 set by the Central government.” 

The government claims that the new wage structure is 2.57 times the existing salary. However, in reality, it is just 2.57 times of the basic pay and not the entire package, said JACTTO-GEO members, explaining the maths behind the wordplay. Questioning the rationale behind the MLAs hiking their own salaries while pushing the government employees to streets for their rights, K Kanagaraj, State committee member of the CPM, pointed out the disparity in take-home salary existing among State government employees as well. “While those in the higher echelons of power draw salary in lakhs, those in the lower strata got only a few thousands,” he added. JACTTO-GEO members now hope that their grievances would be redressed when the Madras High Court takes up their case on October 23.

Another issue that has got the employees’ goat is the spike in liquor price. Coming close on the heels of government nod to SPC recommendations, the hike in liquor price to cushion the additional burden on State coffers is embarassing, say a cross-section of the members. R Mutharasan, State secretary of CPI, said that increasing liquor price was one of the many attempts to shore up government’s revenue.