Karnataka - Madikeri   

Wage pact between Govt., plantation owners opposed

Staff Correspondent

Workers to protest in Madikeri, Hassan, and Chikmagalur on Thursday

MADIKERI: The Kodagu District General Workers' Union and the Karnataka Provincial Plantation Workers' Union have opposed the bipartite agreement between the State Government and the Plantation Owners' Association and a few other workers' unions, as they felt that will adversely affect the interests of the workers involved in the industry.

The secretary of the Kodagu District General Workers' Union, I.R. Pramod, and the general secretary of the Karnataka Provincial Plantation Workers' Union, V. Sukumar, said in a joint statement here on Tuesday that while a worker should be getting Rs. 78.66 as minimum wage for a day's work from April 1, 2005, he will get only Rs. 72.83 going by the draft publication of the Government and the subsequent signing of the agreement. The State Government had published the draft wage in February 2004.

The two unions affiliated to the Centre for Indian Trade Unions had opposed the draft wage publication for plantation workers in the two meetings convened before the agreement was signed, they said.

New wage structure

Mr. Pramod urged the Government to publish a new wage structure for the plantation workers.

The two unions wrote to the State Labour Ministry and the Labour Commissioner to publish a corrected and final minimum wage structure for plantation workers recently. Mr. Pramod said that the agreement was irrational and unscientific.

According to the agreement, the consumer price index was fixed at 2703 points from April 1, 2005, but the hike in the index over the past two years was not considered. The dearness allowance was reduced from the proposed Rs. 3.5 per point increase in the index to Rs. 2.75. It will be payable from April 1, 2005 to March 31, 2008.

This arrangement will only benefit the plantation owners, they said.

Mr. Sukumar and Mr. Pramod said that the State Government, which had re-constituted the minimum wage committee, must reconsider the agreement and publish a new scale in tune with the Supreme Court verdict that can be applicable to all plantation workers in the State.

Temporary contract labour system

The Government should also scrap the temporary contract labour system existing in the plantations.

They said that the plantation workers will take out a rally in front of the office of the Deputy Commissioner here on May 12 to register their protest against the wage agreement. Similar protests will be held at Hassan and Chikmagalur districts.

The president of the Kodagu General Workers' Union, P. Veeraswamy, in a separate statement, opposed the new wage agreement and appealed to the plantation workers to participate in the protests.

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