In addition to 40,000 workmen, the mining giant will also recruit management executives, from premier institutes.
Coal India, a Government of India undertaking, apparently has massive hiring plans for the coming few years. The mining giant has decided to hire 4,500 fresh graduates from premier institutes to the management cadre in the next three years, beginning next month. As part of the bulk hiring, it will also recruit an additional 40,000 workmen at the same time.
The company stated that the management executives shall be recruited from institutes, such as the IITs and NITs. The recruitment plan for this year is about 1,000 while another 3,500 will be recruited over the next three years. In addition, the workmen to be hired are going to be technical people and diploma holders, mining sardars, overseers, electrical workers, fittings experts, dumper operators and other equipment operators. Candidates for these positions are all directly recruited by the subsidiary companies and it is estimated that the subsidiaries would require around 40,000 people in the next three years!
Around 45,000 workmen will apparently retire by 2018. Approx. 15,000 have been retiring every year for the past couple of years and the trend is expected to continue for three more years. This is because, the ones retiring are mostly legacy workmen whom the state-run company inherited when coal production was nationalised in 1975. The lowest age of workmen inducted into the company at that time was 18 years.
Considering the average age of workers, by 2017-18, most of these employees will have attained at least 42 years of service and will retire. The total number of employees is around 3.2 lakh, of which around 19,000 are officers. As a result of the large number of workmen retiring together, the share of salary and wages in cost of production would apparently decline to 35-40 per cent from the current 50 per cent.
Presently, the largest component in the cost of production of coal at CIL is wages and salaries. It was about 43-44 per cent some time back, but has increased to 50 per cent after the recent increase in wages. Following retirement of a large chunk of workmen, CIL will strive for greater mechanisation and increased outsourcing of coal production, which is further expected to increase its productivity massively.