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PSU workers earn 15-80% more than pvt counterparts

Mamata Singh

Industrial workers in the public sector are earning 15 to 80 per cent more than the wages earned by workers in the private sector.

According to the Annual Survey of Industries for 1999-2000, in the top ten industrialised states, the average annual wage differential between public and private sector industrial workers varies between Rs 12,000 and Rs 90,000.

Industrial workers in the public sector earn highest salaries in Gujarat, closely followed by Andhra Pradesh. West Bengal comes a distant third.

In case of private sector industrial workers, the highest wages are paid in Maharashtra, with West Bengal coming a distant second, followed closely by Haryana.

In Gujarat the wage differential between public and private sector industrial workers is almost 66 per cent, which is the second highest differential among the top 10 industrialised states. On an average, a public sector industrial worker in the state earns Rs 10,047 per month.

The disparity is maximum in Andhra Pradesh with government employees earning almost 80 per cent more than private sector employees in this segment. The average annual wage for an industrial worker in Andhra Pradesh is Rs 113,634 per year against Rs 22,594 for a person engaged in comparable work in the private sector.

According to experts, this is partly because factory workers in the private sector tend to get paid only the minimum wages, while that is not the case in the public sector.

In Maharashtra, which tops the states in terms of gross value of output, an industrial worker in the public sector earns Rs 77,205 per year, 15.9 per cent higher than the average annual salary of Rs 64,936 in the private sector.

In West Bengal, the differential works out to 46.5 per cent with a public sector worker earning Rs 87,074 per year against Rs 46,546 in the private sector.

In five of the 10 states, the wage differential varies between 30 per cent and 50 per cent. In Haryana, the wage differential is around 36 per cent, while in Uttar Pradesh it is 45 per cent.

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