WEST BENGAL - NO PENSION BUT FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE TO CLUBS FOR POLITICIAL PURPOSE

PENSION NOT ENHANCED IN LAST 10 YEARS

PENSION BILL - PROTEST STRIKE

PENSION BILL - CENTRAL GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES

12TH JULY COMMITTEE PROTESTS AGAINST PENSION BILL

RALLY AGAINST PENSION BILL AT KOLKATA

PENSIONERS OF NORTH BENGAL STATE TRANSPORT CORPORATION DEMAND PENSION ON 1ST DAY OF EVERY MONTH

PENSION BILL - ITS ADVERSE EFFECTS

TAPAN SEN SPEAKS IN THE RAJYA SABHA ON PENSION SCHEME

GOVERNMENT EMPLPOYEES PROTEST AGAINST PENSION BILL IN KOLKATA

BANSA GOPAL CHOWDHURY, MP RAISES IN PARLIAMENT PROBLEMS OF COALMINE PENSION HOLDERS

PENSION BILL: NATIONAL CONVENTION IN DELHI

PENSION BILL: SURRENDER TO IMPERIALIST FINANCE CAPITAL

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UPA GOVERNMENT ABOLISHES PENSION

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EMPLOYEES, WORKERS AND TEACHERS PROTEST AGAINST PENSION BILL AT KOLKATA

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PENSION BILL A CURSE FOR WORKING CLASS IN INDIA

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CITU DENOUNCES INTRODUCTION OF ANTIWORKER LABOUR AND PENSION REFORM BILLS IN PARLIAMENT

25.03.2011

CITU strongly opposes introduction of Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority Bill by the Government in Parliament on 24th March 2011. The bill is part of the neo-liberal global corporate agenda to change the concept of pension as “defined benefit” to the workers after retirement to a “defined contribution” by the workers, thus making a mockery of pension as social security scheme, with the onus of funding and regulation of the scheme shifting from Government / employer to a Regulator with the main objective to divert the pension contribution by the workers to the share market and corporate equity funds. This bill, initiated during NDA regime could not be pushed through because of the opposition by the working class outside the Parliament and by the left parties within the Parliament. The surreptitious way the UPA government of Congress and its allies has kept the avenues open to the Regulator for unlimited foreign investment in pension fund without requiring a Parliament assent, shows the way the present Government in connivance with the major opposition party, the BJP, is surrendering to the pressure of International Finance Capital.

CITU also strongly opposes the introduction of Labour Law amendment bill proposing exemption from furnishing returns and maintaining registers by certain establishments. The bill, if passed, would exempt more than eighty percent of existing establishments in the country, to ignore virtually all labour laws of the land, as they would not be required to maintain any records of workers working within their establishments. CITU along with other Central TUs have been opposing this so called ‘Labour Reform’ bill which will usher a jungle law in the industry.

CITU calls upon the working class to intensify their ongoing struggle against the above legislations, so that the corporate captive government is forced to withdraw the above bills from the Parliament.

Courtesy: www.citucentre.org/

PRESS RELEASE BY CITU ON PENSION FUND REGULATORY & DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY BILL 2011

The Pension Fund Regulatory & Development Authority Bill 2011 (PFRDA Bill) is almost the same version of the same bill introduced in parliament in 2005 with minor changes.

When the 2005 Bill was introduced, there had been murmuring and opposition among the government employees as it had direct bearing on the pension prospect of the Central Government employees who joined service on or after 1-1-2004 for whom government already notified a new contributory pension scheme 22nd December 2003.

The New Pension Scheme notified in December 2003 envisaged a contribution of 10% of wages by the employee with a matching contribution from the Central government as employer which together will form the pension account for the concerned employee. The Fund will be managed and handled by fund managers appointed by the PFRDA and the employees will get pension by the end of his service life and the pension amount will be determined by the return on investment of his pension fund made by the appointed fund manager.

Originally government employees used to get pension at 50% of his last pay drawn and the pension amount used to get revised with the changes in price indices. It was an assured amount. To get this system of assured pension system in place, the government employees had to forego their right to contributory provident fund, i.e., employer’s matching contribution to PF. In lieu of that surrender of right, assured pension was granted to them to be paid from the consolidated fund of India. This system of assured pensionary benefit is called “benefit defined” pension system.

The New Pension Scheme brought about a paradigm shift in the entire concept of pension as a social security measure. Now the pension will be based on “defined contribution” meaning thereby that the pension amount will be governed by what the employee’s “pension fund account” can earn from investment in the market. The NPS does not ensure any assured amount of pension to the employee despite his life-long contribution to his own pension fund. Both the Pension Scheme notified by the government and the PFRDA Bill (both 2005 and 2011) mentioned in clear terms that “ There shall be no implicit or explicit assurance of benefits market based guaranteed mechanism to be purchased by the subscriber”. (Sec 20(2)(g) of the PFRDA Bill)

Can market ever guarantee any assured return on investments ? In the present day market situation with extreme volatility in both the money market and the share market, the return on investment of public funds like pension-funds is destined to be uncertain and low. Moreover, the Fund managers appointed by the PFRDA will handle the fund not for charity but for their own profit. Hence whatever return on pension fund investment that will reach the pensioner will be the net amount after ensuring profit of the fund managers as well. In the context of natural uncertainty of the market, fund managers are naturally expected to neutralize their risk first and then take care of the risk of the pensioners who actually supplies capital to the fund managers through their life time savings in pension fund. Therefore the PFRDA Bill has paved the new regime of replacing assured pension by a pension system governed by the market forces playing with the employees’ life time savings. Thus PFRDA Bill and the pension system it enforces is an onslaught on the social security right of the government employees, a loot on their pension fund.

Efforts for investing a part of the provident fund accumulations of the workers in stock market is being made since long by the government but owing to resistance by the unions that could not be done as yet. The whole system of counting upon the opinion of the workers through their representatives in the matter of investment of their own fund in their social security corpus has been given a go by in the new dispensation of PFRDA regime and the fund-managers and brokers will have the last say on how the employees’ savings will be invested.

But the situation under which the PFRDA Bill 2011 has been put in place has opened another dangerous dimension. It is no more limited to the pension earnings of the Central Government employees alone or the state government employees in the states where state government also adopted the new pension scheme. The bill empowers the government to extend the ambit to all the existing pension schemes. But most alarmingly, through PFRDA Bill the government now plans to attract the savings of the 46 crore unorganized sector workers for investment in the stock market on the same scheme of market based uncertain returns.

The government has introduced New Pension Scheme, now named as “National Pension System” for unorganized sector workers. As per the scheme, which is now known as “Swabalamban” and being advertised a lot, the workers will have to contribute to pension fund minimum RS 1000/- per year and maximum Rs 12000/-. After making contribution for 30 years or so, at the age of 60 years the worker will be eligible to get 60 per cent of his contribution as lump sum and a pension of not less than Rs 1000 per month provided rest of his fund can ensure such return from the market. If his fund earns less, then the portion of lump sum receipt after retirement will go down and if his/her entire fund(100% of his contribution) fails to earn the minimum stipulated amount of pension (Rs 1000/-) he/she has to make more contribution to be eligible for getting the minimum pension. To allure people towards this scheme, the government has announced that it will contribute Rs 1000/- per year for five years till 2015-16.

Already, government started making aggressive effort to enroll workers in the so called Swabalamban Scheme. Anganwadi workers who have been struggling since long for pensionary benefit are now being pressurized in many states to accept “Swabalamban” by the respective state governments.

How far the unorganized sector workers are going to be benefited by this scheme ? As they do not have any pension benefit at present, it is but natural that a good section of them will be attracted towards the scheme. Will they get any assured pensionary benefit after making contribution for the scheme ? No.

The Scheme is silent if there is a break in continuity of contribution which is but natural for the unorganized sector workers, frequently losing jobs and changing employment. What will happen if he contributes for five years thereafter for one year he fails to make contribution or after making contribution for say ten years became incapacitated to earn say at his forty years of age and could not continue contribution. Will he have to wait up to sixty years either to claim pension or lump sum payment. All these possibilities are not exceptional cases but a natural phenomenon in the life of the unorganized sector workers.

As per calculation, a worker after making contribution for 30 years at the rate of Rs 100 per month(Rs 1200 per year) will accumulate Rs 1,49,035/- which, if fully invested at 8 per cent return can ensure a monthly return of Rs 993/- to him. Now as per the scheme, if he is to get the minimum stipulated pension amount of Rs 1000/-, he will neither get any thing as lump sum. And there is no guarantee whether the investment of his fund will continue to fetch him 8 per cent return at all point of time. If it does not earn 8 per cent in any year, what will happen to his pension earning, the scheme is not clear about such happenings.

But one thing is amply clear. The new pension system will not ensure any secure pension amount for the unorganized workers despite his continuous contribution to pension fund. Pension amount will be governed by the return earned through investment in market. And the investment will not be merely in the form of credit at assured rate of interest but also in equity market as time to time decided by the fund managers. And such type of investment can no way ensure assured return.

The whole game-plan is altogether different. The share market needs a continuous flow of liquidity to keep up its temperature for the speculators and brokers earn. Pension fund can be one such source for such liquidity as it belongs to none but the poor workers which can be risked for speculative purposes. In the name of providing pension to unorganized sector workers who do not have any social security benefits, the present scheme of Swabalamban has got a prospect of attracting crores of hapless workers to contribute for their old age security cutting their stomach at present. It has a propensity to garner lakhs of crore of rupees from a market in which 46 crore unorganized sector workers will be the customers. Obligation for paying pension will come after twenty or thirty years. The PFRDA Bill has already provided for the exit route for the fund managers and aggregators by section 20(2)(g) as quoted in the foregoing paragraph and also giving wide arbitrary power to PFRDA to decide and also denying the trade unions to have their say on the investment and delivery of the benefit to the workers as is the practice in case of Employees Provident Fund.

So far as the experiences of pension fund investment in the stock market in various countries in the world is concerned, on all occasions, workers money in pension fund was used to raise the temperature in the stock market to make the brokers and speculators gain and workers always lost in that exercise.

Therefore, it is no more a case of pension for a few crore workers in government sector whose rights and money is being looted. It a much bigger market of 46 crore unorganized sector workers who are being allured to pay for their old age security even by remaining half-fed having immense potential of garnering several thousands of crore for fuelling the stock market. Whether the poor contributors will really get old-age security is as uncertain as the stock market. But that question will arise after twenty years. Till that time the dacoity and plunder can go on and that is precisely the game plan of the speculator-captive government at the centre.

Pension will no more remain a secure social security, it will become a funding source for unscrupulous investors, both domestic and foreign, which will be used through speculative share market. The Government in order to please the foreign pension fund operators, in USA, has kept the avenue fully open for FDI investment. With this bill, if passed, the hard earned money of crores of unorganized sector will be utilized for speculation. Can the working class and the country as a whole tolerate such open and shameless fraud in the name of social security of millions?

Courtesy: www.citucentre.org/

PENSION FUND REGULATORY AND DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY BILL

UPA GOVERNMENT OUT TO PERPETRATE CRIMES UPON PEOPLE - Tapan Sen

THE Congress-led government of the day is on a spree to commit one crime after another on the nation and the people. If the UPA-1 regime could not fulfil its wish-list of anti-people measures as it was dependent on the Left to remain in power, the Congress now has allies like the Trinamul Congress and DMK and an “opposition” like the BJP who support the government in most of its criminal acts.

These crimes are a legion --- from arrogant patronisation to allowing the speculators and hoarders in the food market to jack the prices up and earn windfall profit. It did everything to enable the corporate houses to loot the public exchequer, e.g. in telecom spectrum sale or in procurement of contracts for the Commonwealth Games.

On March 24, the government reintroduced the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority Bill, which the Left intervention had forced to lapse during the last Lok Sabha. On March 24, when the Left MPs in Lok Sabha pressed for a division during the introduction of the bill, as usual the allies lent support to the bill while the main opposition, BJP, also joined in bailing the government out. As it is, this bill is going to facilitate a loot on the social security right of the mass of toiling people, in order too to pamper and patronise the speculators.

The PFRDA Bill proposes a paradigm shift of the very concept of social security like pension from a defined benefit to a contribution arrangement. It liberates the government from its basic obligation to provide for secured benefits and tells the people to purchase their pension, if they so desire, from the market. The new concept will be imposed on all central government employees joining the service on or after January 1, 2004. The bill envisages pension to be given to the employees and workers at the rate based on return on their own money invested in the market. It has mentioned in no uncertain term that there will be no “implicit or explicit assurance” of guaranteed return.

The message is loud and clear. The pension will no more be secure and no more linked with the price index. Workers have to make hefty contributions to get a pension but even after making their contributions, they will have no guarantee that their life-long contribution will fetch them an assured amount. Everything will be decided by the gods of the market. The accumulated contribution of the workers would inevitably flow to the stock market, to be speculated by the fund managers appointed by the Pension Regulatory Authority. There will be no guarantee from the government. Pension amounts will go down if the market is low, and life-long savings will be lost if the market crashes.

So far, the experiences of pension fund investment in stock market in various countries has been that, on all occasions, workers’ money in pension fund was used to raise the temperature in the stock market, whereupon brokers and speculators always gained and workers always lost.

As this bill proposes, pension will no more be a social security, i.e. a secure return at the end of service life. The bill seeks to convert pension, or for that matter all kinds of social security, into a business for speculators. Once this bill becomes an act, other social security funds like provident fund etc will, sooner or later, come in its ambit; the government may well retune its monetary policy and interest rate regime to ensure this disastrous inevitability.

While the PFRDA Bill ensures liberal unhindered entry of foreign investors in the pension business, it also ensures that parliament would not decide any ceiling on foreign participation. This will be decided by a subservient government through an executive order, in the interest of speculative finance capital and foreign masters.

If this not a crime upon the people, then what else it is?

POINT TO PONDER

The point to seriously ponder is that homework for all these three disastrous bills started during the BJP-led NDA regime and that the UPA-1 regime made frequent efforts to push them through, though in vain. Also, both the alliances, NDA and UPA, hah had certain common partners in these exercises of criminality. Two such common partners have been the Trinamul Congress and DMK who aided in these disastrous anti-worker and anti-people exercises. None of them can wash its hands off.

Moreover, the main opposition party, the BJP, has also joined hands in perpetrating these crimes on people and the nation.

In fact, it is the Left parties and the working people’s movement, whose aspirations coincide with the Left’s vision on national interest and people’s right, who have been putting up a real opposition to such neo-liberal crimes.

The perpetrators of these crimes, their allies and their hangers-on stand identified today, but their game is not yet over. Though these bills have been introduced, they have not been passed. The situation demands more mobilisation and more militant resistance outside --- in the workplaces, on the streets. Only the Left can lead this struggle and help people recognise their real enemies.

Courtesy: www.pd.cpim.org/

PENSION FUND REGULATORY AND DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY BILL

ALL INDIA STATE GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES’ FEDERATION AND THE CONFEDERATION OF CENTRAL GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES AND WORKERS PROTEST

THROUGH a statement issued from Kolkata on March 25, by its senior vice chairman Sukomal Sen, the All India State Government Employees’ Federation (AISGEF) has informed that on the day the federation organised in all the states of the country, right from Kashmir to Kerala, two-hour walkouts and demonstrations to condemn the introduction of Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) bill and demand its withdrawal. Effigies of the bill were also burnt in some states.

The All India State Government Employees Federation and the Confederation of Central Government Employees had jointly called for these protest actions.

One recalls that on March 24 this year, the UPA government at the centre introduced the PFRDA bill with the support of main opposition party, the BJP, ignoring the strong protest registered by the Left parties. It was immediately after knowing about it that the state and central government employees launched the aforementioned two- hour walkout from their offices and conducted powerful demonstrations in front of their offices, condemning the anti-employee attitude of the UPA government and demanding immediate withdrawal of the bill.

It is reported that state government employees organised the programme with success in Tripura, Assam, West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Maharashtra, Kerala, Tamilnadu, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan. Employees in Kerala, Tripura and West Bengal organised massive walkouts and demonstrations.

In Haryana, where the Sarva Karamchari Sangh had lent its support to the call for protest actions, about 20,000 employees belonging to the electricity corporation, municipalities and municipal corporations, teachers, irrigation, education, health, public health, urban development, forest department participated in such walkouts and demonstrations at 180 places of 21 districts of the state.

For this protest, the Sarva Karmachari Sangh leaders had toured through whole of the state to mobilise the employees for sustained programmes of action in the days to come. They brought out the pernicious impact of the bill on the existing pensionary benefits of the government employees and also exposed the real character of the BJP in detail.

During the campaign on this programme in all the states, AISGEF leaders and activists explained the political aspect of this issue. They convincingly placed before the employees the difference between the UPA-I government which, standing on the support of 61 Left MPs, was unable to commit any such mischief while the UPA-II government, taking the advantage of the weak position of the Left in parliament, desperately steamrolling all the harmful and anti-employee bill like the Banking Regulation (Amendment) Bill and the PFRDA bill, while the next to follow is more FDI in insurance industry.

The AISGEF’s contention is that it is due to the pressure exerted by the World Bank, IMF and finance capital in and out the country that the successive governments at the centre, headed by the NDA and the UPA, were trying to privatise the pension funds by placing it at the disposal of private fund managers and thereby paving way for investment of the astronomical pension fund amount in share market speculations. Despite the fact that international experience has proved the privatisation of pension as being beneficial neither to the employees nor to governments, such shameless attempts are being pursued continuously in the interest of private entrepreneurs.

Right from the early days of 2005, when the bill was first introduced in the parliament, MPs belonging to the Left parties in and the working class all over the country have been relentlessly fighting against the blatant attempts of the governments and that is why the bill could not be passed in the parliament. Yet the central government and many state governments are implementing the new pension scheme through administrative orders, without the sanction of parliament. Only the Left ruled the states, viz, West Bengal, Tripura and Kerala, have declared that they will not implement the new pension scheme for their employees.

The All India State Government Employees’ Federation and the Confederation of the Central Government Employees and Workers have decided to further intensify the struggle through direct the entire government employees and teachers in this country, numbering more than 80 lakhs, for withdrawal of the PFRDA bill and restoration of the existing Defined Benefit Pension Scheme to all the employees and teachers irrespective of their recruitment into the service. The AISGEF leaders have also urged the employees to get prepared for a prolonged and militant struggle so as to upturn the government’s anti-working class decision. They said the political balance has to be immediately changed to save the country’s interest.

Courtesy: www.pd.cpim.org/