LIC employees hold protest, demand wage revision

LIC employees holding protest demonstration in Jammu.
LIC employees holding protest demonstration in Jammu.

Excelsior Correspondent

JAMMU, Feb 27: LIC employees of the State held massive demonstrations during lunch recess today in front of LIC offices to press for their genuine demands pending since long with a special focus on wage revision, pension option and scrapping of Defined Contribution Pension Scheme (DCPS).
The demonstrations were organized on the joint call of Federation of Class-1 Officers’ Association, National Federation of Insurance Field Workers of India (NFIFWI) and All India Insurance Employees’ Association (AIIEA).
The unions were represented and led by Vijay Khajuria and Ravi Pandita from Class-1 Federation, Rakesh Magotra and Mohd Ashraf Bhat from NFIFWI and Pawan Gupta and A M Tantray from Northern Zone Insurance Employees’ Association.
The leaders said that the wage revision of LIC employees has been due since 1st August 2017 and there is no genuine response either from the management or from the Government. “It is unfortunate that even the negotiations for the wage revision have not started yet. This inordinate delay has caused a lot of resentment among employees,” they added.
They further added, “In spite of the fact that productivity per employee has increased to a big extent and also servicing to customers has touched the sky, the aspect of wage revision of employees is not being taken care of”. They demanded wage hike of 40% seeing to the productivity and paying capacity of the industry.
It was also focused and pressed to give final option for pension scheme 1995 to the left out employees. “The demand for a final option to join the 1995 Pension Scheme remains unresolved even after 10 years of raising this demand,” the leaders added.
It was also demanded to scrap the DCPS and replace it with old pension scheme as the DCPS does not adhere to the social security of pensioners in old age. Other demands like five day week, PLLI, and recruitment was also raised. It was announced that one hour walkout strike will be observed by LIC employees all over India in support of these demands on 1st March 2019 preceding lunch recess.