Covid brings pay losses to ordnance factory workers

Nagpur: An employee of the ordnance factory Ambajhari, Cyril Pedro, whose wife has been undergoing treatment for a major illness, has been facing financial crisis due to the pandemic even if the organization provides enough facilities, including healthcare, for its employees.
Pedro, a government employee though, is among the thousands of workers in 41 ordnance factories across the country who have suffered indirect pay cuts. The ordnance factory workers are perhaps the only central government employees whose salaries have been reduced due to Covid-19.
For the factories’ employees right from the level of industrial workers till charge man, piecework allowance — a variable pay depending on the productivity — and overtime make a sizeable component of their monthly salaries.
The unprecedented lockdown due to Covid-19 stopped the piecework allowance and overtime. Even as most of the factories resumed functioning from June and some started earlier, the production levels have not picked up yet. This has led to a reduction of Rs10,000 to Rs20,000 per month in salaries of the ordnance factory workers. There is hardly any payment of the two allowances.
As the allowances are paid on a regular basis, the employees do their financial planning, considering it as part of their take home pay.
Pedro’s salary sheet shows a net salary of Rs47,000. “I am not entitled to piecework allowance but get overtime, which was stopped in February itself as the workload was down. This further continued due to covid,” he said.
“The employees plan their expenses and even take loans considering that they will be getting piecework and overtime each month. Now, their entire calculations have gone haywire. There are employees who are finding it difficult to pay for their children’s education or EMIs,” ordnance factory employees association president Girish Khade said.
Khade said a worker at junior level who has a gross pay of Rs30,000 could manage to get another Rs10,000 to 15,000 as the two allowances. For the senior workers, it went up to Rs22,000. The charge men who did not get piecework allowance managed to get Rs16,000 extra through overtime. Piecework allowance is pegged on the extra work done as against what is expected in the mandated hours.
Bharatiya Pratiraksha Mazdoor Sangh general secretary Mukesh Singh said, “It’s not for pay alone that the workers want the production to pick up. The current situation on the Chinese front has left them emotionally charged up and they want to contribute to the nation’s defence also.”
“The allowances were not to be paid due to the lockdown. Even after restarting factories, the production could not reach the regular levels due to problems in procuring raw material from the industry. Now, it is up to the factory management at local level to ensure that the raw material supply is resumed so that the workload increases too,” he said.