HAL settles wage hike demand by staff unions

The Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) has settled the wage revision demand of its employees' unions nearly two months after they went on strike since October 14 but resumed work a week later in compliance with the Karnataka High Court directive, the state-run defence behemoth said on Wednesday.

"The management and the trade unions of the workforce signed an agreement on wage revision hike on Tuesday here, which will be retrospectively effective since January 1, 2017," the company said in a statement here.

The All-India HAL Trade Unions Coordination Committee struck work on October 14 at nine locations across the country for revised wage settlement with effective January 2017, it added.

The previous two revisions were in 2012 and 2007.

The agreement has offered fitment benefit at 12 per cent, perks and allowances under the cafeteria system at 25 per cent for workmen in scale 1-10 and at 22 per cent for workmen in special scale) of the revised basic pay besides other unspecified benefits.

"On ratification by the company's board, a tripartite settlement before the labour authorities will be made at all the 9 locations before notifying the revised wage structure," added the statement.

The company petitioned the Karnataka High Court on October 17 for a direction to the workforce to withdraw the strike and report to work.

The unions sought a wage revision given to the executives, a gross salary hike of 35 per cent, including 110-140 per cent hike in perks.

About 10,000 employees work in the company's Bengaluru production complex.

The Karnataka High Court on October 22 directed the workers to call off the strike and resolve the issue through talks in the presence of the state labour commissioner.

Complying with the court order, the staff resumed work on October 24 after calling off their 10-day strike.

The PSU aerospace major has about 20,000 employees in 5 production complexes in Bengaluru in Karnataka, Hyderabad in Telangana, Koraput in Odisha, Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh and Nashik in Maharashtra and 4 research and development (R&D) centres across the country.IANS