7th Pay Commission – Finmin’s Blink on EPF Gives Confidence to Unions & Employees

7th Pay Commission – Finmin’s Blink on EPF Gives Confidence to Unions & Employees

7th Pay Commission – Finmin’s Blink on EPF Gives Confidence to Unions & Employees – Labour movement of the garment workers of Karnataka state is an eye-opener for all.

The flip-flops by Union government on the revised EPF withdrawal norms may embolden government employees to strike work on July 11 as a means to get higher wages and allowances under 7th Pay Commission.

First, under the public outlash, the government withdrew the budgetary proposal to make 40 percent of the EPF corpus taxable. Now, under the protest of garment factory workers in the Bangluru area, central government again withdrew its February 10 notification which prevented an employee from withdrawing 100 percent of the EPF corpus before the age of 58 years.

In a third flip-flop, the government has decided to reverse its earlier decision of reducing the interest rate on Employees’ Provident Fund deposits for 2015-16 and instead keep it at 8.8 per cent, in line with the stand of the Central Board of Trustees (CBT) of the EPF Organisation (EPFO).

The flip-flops by the Govt on the revised EPF withdrawal norms has emboldened the government employees for nationwide protests against 7th pay commission recommendations.

“The labour movement of the garment workers of Karnataka state is an eye-opener for all the other working class in the entire country,”said PS Prasad, Secretary General, Confederation of Central Government Employees and Workers Karnataka State.
“If the Central Government employees also participate in trade union action against the retrograde recommendations of the 7th Pay Commission similar to the Garment Workers of Karnataka, we too can get similar results and hope for a better wage revision and a decent wage hike”, Prasad was further quoted as saying.

Source: http://www.gconnect.in