The new tripartite wage-pact for the jute industry has dropped the productivity linked wage clause, which was introduced in 2002 to improve efficiencies in the over century-old industry. The three-year agreement takes effect from April 2015.
While this may be case for cheer for the workers (who saw it as a coercive management tool), they were not too happy with the marginal increase in wages that the agreement will bring. Around Rs.26 per month for workers, who have joined till 2010. The average earnings of a jute mill worker vary between Rs.7,600 and Rs.11,000. New entrants will get a basic pay of Rs.257 against the present Rs.157.
There were voices of dissent within the industry over this pact. It was felt that the marginal increase in wages and the pegging of the basic pay for new entrants at levels below the minimum wages for 61 trades will trigger a fresh spell of unrest in an industry where incidents of worker-violence had led to the death of a mill manager last year.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee too had identified the jute and the tea industry as her two areas of concern.
A section of the industry was also peeved over the dropping of the productivity clause saying that this ran counter to the Centre’s stress on evolving production norms (production control orders) for incentivising jute mills to improve production efficiency.
Chairman of the apex industry body, the Indian Jute Mills Association (IJMA) Raghavendra Gupta told The Hindu that this was perhaps most that the industry could absorb as it was passing through a difficult situation over the last one and a half years with declining demand and cheaper imports. He said that this would increase wage-costs, which account for 30 per cent of total cost of production by about three per cent.
The president of the All India Trinamool Congress Trade Union (INTTUC) and Rajya Sabha MP Dola Sen saw this as a historic agreement. “It is so for several reasons,” she said.
She said that this was the first instance of forging out an agreement in the jute industry without a strike. “There were no strikes preceding the agreement which has been signed by 22 unions.”
Ms. Sen also said that production review committees would be set up to replace the system of productivity linked wages as this was hardly implemented in any mill.
