Steel Authority of India Ltd’s 85,000 non-executive employees will get a 17 per cent hike in basic pay and dearness allowance along with a 6 per cent rise in perks.

The wage revision, pending for over two-and-a-half years, was approved by Steel Minister Narendra Singh Tomar on Wednesday.

Additional expense A senior company official said the State-run steelmaker has already made the provision for paying out majority of the arrears and the immediate outgo will be ₹2,300 crore.

Due to the wage hike, SAIL will bear an additional expense of ₹1,000 crore annually. In fiscal 2013-14, SAIL had spent ₹9,594.03 crore, which was around 20 per cent of its total income from operations for the fiscal.

Sign pact Following the Ministry’s approval, the company will now sign an agreement with the employees and within a month of signing the agreement, the hikes would be implemented.

The rise is lower than the initial demand of the worker’s union representatives. Unions had asked for a 21.6 per cent hike in basic and dearness allowances, similar to the levels of 2007.

However, the figure was brought down after the management said that given the current market conditions, a hike on the lines of the 2007 wage rise will not be possible.

SAIL’s employee wages are revised every five years and the current wage revision has been pending since January 2012.

The steelmaker reported a profit of ₹2,631 crore for 2013-14 on a total income from operations of ₹46,837 crore.

The profit for 2013-14 was up 21.2 per cent, while total income from operations had risen around 5 per cent.

On Thursday, SAIL’s shares closed 0.58 per cent higher on the BSE at ₹104.05.

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