The unions of PSU general insurance industry are yet to respond to the new proposal

However, there are indications that the unions will reject the latest wage revision proposals from the GIPSA and would like to stick their demand for a pay parity with Life Insurance Corporation(LIC) which had got 16 per cent salary hike for its employees after the new wage revision concluded in 2021

If implemented, with 12% hike and salary arrears for 5 years, there will be a total outgo of Rs 8146 crore from all four companies for meeting wage revision expenses

The GIPSA has also informed the unions that this is the last common wage negotiation for all the four companies and GIC Re and the future wage negotiation will be variable based on financial strength and decisions of companies separately

New Delhi:

Improving its previous offer, the GIPSA, the official coordinating agency of four PSU general insurers and GIC Re, on behalf of the government now has proposed an overall hike of 12 per cent with full arrears from August 2017 for the 44,000 PSU general insurance industry workforce.

There will be 100  per cent arrears from Aug 2017, said the proposal. There will be also 100 per cent neutralization of daily allowances for the employees  as on July 2017

The negotiation between GIPSA and various unions of PSU insurance industry is currently going on in New Delhi on Thursday.

The unions are yet to respond to the proposal. GIPSA has given unions one week time to examine the new proposals and revert.

However, there are indications that the unions will reject the latest wage revision proposals from the GIPSA and would like to stick their demand for a pay parity with Life Insurance Corporation(LIC) which had got 16 per cent salary hike for its employees after the new wage revision concluded in 2021.

The GIPSA has also informed the unions that this is the last common wage negotiation for all four companies and GIC Re and the future wage negotiation will be variable based on financial strength and decisions of companies separately.

If the unions accept the new proposals of 12 per cent hike with full five years of arrears, wage bill for National Insurance Company will be around Rs 2177 crore , Rs 2080 crore for New India Assurance , Rs 2135 crore for Oriental Insurance Company and Rs 1752 crore United India Insurance.

There will be a total outgo of Rs 8146 crore from all four companies for meeting wage revision expenses, said analysts.

Earlier, the unions had postponed their two-day country-wide strike from Jul 27 after GIPSA had informed them that the issues over wage –negotiation as demanded by the unions are being taken up “seriously”.

The unions had said they would meet on 5th August to review the situation and decide further course of action.

The GIPSA had earlier offered a very low wage hike of seven per cent with immediate effect but without any past arrears since August 2017 to their employees, that was outrightly rejected by all the employee unions in the industry.

Alternatively, at the instance of ministry of finance, the GIPSA, the official coordinating agency of all PSU general insurers, has offered an immediate wage hike of five per cent along with two per cent arrears with effect from August 2017.

However, rejecting all the offers of the GIPSA , the unions have demanded a wage revision at par with state owned Life Insurance Corporation(LIC) with effect from August, 2017.

The government last year had approved a 16 per cent wage revision with arrears and 15 per cent of similar hikes with arrears for the employees of LIC and PSU banking industry respectively.