The Tirupur Exporters’ Association (TEA), the South India Hosiery Manufacturers’ Association (SIHMA) and four other textile associations at Tirupur are exploring a new common wage agreement for the workers.

As of now, there is no common wage agreement for the textile workers in Tirupur. SIHMA, along with a few other associations, signed a separate wage pact for the workers, while, TEA along with a few other associations signed a different wage pact.

The pay scale for the different verticals of the textile and garmenting sector like packing, knitting machine operations, tailoring, damage checking, ironing, fabrication and labelling is different under both agreements.

A common agreement will bring parity in the pay scale of workers across the entire textile cluster. It will also make the negotiation procedure with labour unions easy, SIHMA said.