Minimum Pension Hike, Tax Incentives Among Key Demands Raised By Trade Unions In Pre-Budget Meeting

Workers' representatives have urged the government to provide tax incentives on social security contributions, regularisation of scheme workers, restoration of the old pension scheme and raising entitlement for EPFO pensioners to Rs 9,000 per month.

The demands were raised during a pre-budget meeting of the financial ministry's top brass on Thursday with trade union representatives.

The memorandum submitted by a forum of ten central trade unions stated that the ceiling limit for the income tax rebate for the salaried class on their salary, the ceiling of EPFO and ESI contribution and entitlement must be substantially raised.

The ceiling on gratuity should be removed, and the pension should not be taxed, they demanded.

The Union Government-sponsored social security fund for the unorganised and agricultural workers has to be set up to provide them with defined universal social security schemes, including a minimum pension of Rs 9,000 per month linked with DA (dearness allowance) and other medical and educational benefits, they suggested.

They also called for resource mobilising by increasing the corporate tax, wealth tax and introducing inheritance tax instead of burdening the common masses with the GST on essential food items and medicine.

Even one per cent inheritance tax on the super-rich can fetch a huge amount to the budget, they pointed out.

It can be used to finance the education, health and other social sectors. Hence, immediately, GST on essential food items and medicine, and medical insurance has to be drastically reduced, they added.

They also demanded that all existing vacancies in the central government departments and PSUs must be filled immediately.

Fixed-term employment should be stopped and replaced by regular employment in all areas, they suggested.

Unions urged that the New Pension Scheme must be scrapped as the truncated Unified Pension Scheme cannot replace the Old Pension Scheme, and the benefits of the defined old pension scheme must be restored.

They also pitched for increasing the entitlement under EPS-95 (Employees' Pension Scheme-1995) from Rs 1,000 to Rs 9,000 and linking it with DA.

There should be a budgetary allocation for that.

They demanded that the 8th Pay Commission should be constituted immediately, as well as that the pensioners should also continue to be kept under its coverage.

They also suggested that the minimum wages of not less than Rs 26,000 per month with indexation must be fixed in line with the consensus recommendation of the Indian Labour Conference, in which the central government is a party.

Privatisation of PSUs and the National Monetisation pipeline process should be stopped and scrapped, it stated.

The loan waiver of defaulting corporates in the form of liberal write-offs and also the Insolvency Bankruptcy Code route, among others, must be discontinued, as they are delivering practically nothing worthwhile in terms of value-creation and regular employment generation, they stated.

On the same ground, Production-Linked Incentive scheme (PLI), Capital investment incentive scheme (Capex Incentive), Employment-linked Incentive, Components Manufacturing Incentive Scheme, etc, must be discontinued, as they are in the actual operational system, contributing nothing to the national economy either in terms of higher value-creation or employment generation except becoming an unholy and

illegitimate drag on the national exchequer to benefit only the private corporate, they pointed out.

The Pradhan Mantri Internship Yojana, for which last budget has provided an outlay Rs 63,000 crore, will only turn out to be a scheme to subsidise the labour cost and replace regular workforce increasingly by cheap temporary/non-permanent workers (in the name of interns) in the guise of skilling without any obligation on the employers to absorb the interns as employees, they stated.

Stop privatisation of LIC and GIC through different moves like LIC-IPO and withdraw the Bill allowing 100 per cent FDI in the insurance sector, which is detrimental to the larger interest of the common people and the nation.

They also demanded to stop the privatisation of social and service sectors like food/nutrition, health and education.

Scheme Workers, viz Anganwadi, Mid-Day-Meal, ASHA workers, ASHA kiran, block facilitators, para teachers and other scheme workers should be regularised as workers, unions stated.