Ahead of the 2025-26 Budget, trade unions on Monday called on Finance and Corporate Affairs Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to improve benefits for workers by enhancing income tax exemptions, pensions, provident fund, and gratuity provisions, while also seeking an expansion of the MGNREGA employment guarantee programme.
“We had requested the Finance Minister to raise income threshold for income tax to ₹10 lakh with exemptions existing as of now. Also we suggested pensioners must be made exempt from paying income tax on pensions,” Pawan Kumar, North Zonal Organising Secretary, Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, said after the pre budget meeting chaired by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman with trade unions here.
Trade unions had also pitched for restoration of old pension system an instead of National Pension System (NPS) or Unified Pension System (UPS).
Kumar said that he had urged the Finance Minister to immediately constitute the 8th Pay Commission.
“We have also suggested increase in minimum pensions for EPS-95 pensioners from ₹1,000 to ₹5,000 as a first step and then 50 per cent of minimum wages notified and link it with variable deafness allowance (VDA). We have also suggested that Ayushman Bharat Scheme be extended to EPS 95 pensioners”, Kumar said.
On gratuity, trade unions have suggested that gratuity calculation days be increased from 15 per year to 30 per year.
On MGNREGA scheme, Kumar said the suggestion was to broaden the scope of this employment guarantee programme with a guarantee of 200 days of work for each family. “Work in agriculture and allied sectors and related to village and micro industries should be linked to MGNREGA. Wages paid in MGNREGA should not be less than minimum wages under any circumstances. The budgetary allocation should be enhanced to accommodate a more number of workers in the unorganised sector,” he said.
Trade unions have also pitched for reduction in the threshold number of workers from 20 to 10 for the application of Employees Provident Fund Act.
A case was also made for enhancement of coverage limit for EPF and ESIC. The ceiling of both EPF and ESIC need to be increased as they have been fixed so low that a huge chunk of contract workers can’t access its benefits, a trade union representative who attended the meeting said.