‘Transport dept to implement union's pay matrix demand’

CHENNAI: The sixth round of wage revision talks between the Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation and trade unions ended inconclusively on Wednesday even as the transport department in principle agreed to the union's main demand of pay matrix based wage revision.

After seven-hour long negotiation with the unions representatives here, Transport Minister SS Sivasankar said that after the Chief Minister gave consent for implementing the pay matrix for wage revision, the talks were held based on that. "We are yet to reach an agreement on the period from which the pay matrix will be implemented and how many years once it will be renegotiated. Since the union's demands could lead to additional financial burden, we have to get approval from the finance department. Hence the talks could not be concluded, " he said.

All the unions had sought implementation of the pay matrix based revision following the changes made by the previous AIADMK government on the pay scale that ignored seniority.

The minister said that most of the demands put forward by the unions were agreed upon. "We will hold another round of talks, " he said, adding that the issue of 81 months' dearness allowance due for the retired employees would be brought to the notice of Stalin.

DMK affiliated LPF president M Shanmugham said that the government has agreed to give a five per cent hike based on pay matrix. "In the last 10 years, the workers have lost their seniority due to punishment given by the management for taking part in the protests. The government has agreed to take it back. Our demand on hiking various allowances including the fixed allowance of the drivers and conductors in the ordinary buses also accepted," he said.

On the government demand to increase the duration of the wage settlement from three years to four years, he said that the unions have strongly opposed it and the minister has agreed to take it to the notice of the Chief Minister.

Earlier, CITU president A Soundarajan said that his union which has given strike notice wanted to resolve the issues through talks. "If we strike work, it will create hardships to the public," he said.