Time to celebrate: Pay hike for HMT employees

IT IS time for celebration as thousands of employees at HMT will be getting revised salaries following an agreement for the salary revision of employees in five HMT Machine Tools companies, including the Kalamasserry unit, was signed between...
the management and representatives of trade unions in the presence of Ernakulam Regional Labour Commissioner in Kochi recently.
The revised pay structure will come into effect from February 28.
It was also decided that though the employees are eligible to get the arrears from January 1997 to February 2014, the amount will be disbursed only after the company regains its financial stability.
According to the new pay structure, the salary of management staff will be increased by Rs 25,000-30,000, middle-level employees by Rs 8000 and that of workers will be hiked by Rs 2000-6000.
A large number of public sector companies had implemented salary revisions in 1997 and 2007.
But the employees in HMT were paid low. Following this, the employees of HMT, under the banner of the National Confederation of HMT Unions, had started a hunger strike on January 1, 2010, in front of the company gate. The agitation was finally called off after 1520 days on February 28.
On the occasion of signing the agreement, HMT general manager K K Balachandran, production general manager C M Bidher, P R Devanand, Philip John, K Chandran Pillai, D Satheeshkumar, Sharif Marakkar, M J Johnson and Madanamohanan Nair were also present.
Meanwhile, the employees of HMT Machine Tools division in Kalamassery are cheering the new wages agreement.
Notwithstanding the positive move that came after two decades, the unit is struggling to achieve its targets because of paucity of working capital and labour.
Market demand is buoyant and the HMT unit here has orders worth Rs. 60 crore this month.
This points to the fact that market demand for HMT has been sustained through these all years and the future would not be different.
Vacancies at the executive, administrative and worker levels need to be filled immediately, says John V. Daniel, Secretary of HMT Employees’ Federation. He said that the employee strength at the HMT unit here has fallen over 10 years from about 3,000 to the current 340.
About 250 of the employees and officers will retire by 2017-18 leaving only about 100 workers and officers, including new recruits.
Raising retirement age to 60 is one of the solutions being suggested by the employees’ unions to retain experienced hands so that they get enough time to train the new recruits.