AIIEA – All India Insurance Employees Association

About AIIEA

The All India Insurance Employees’ Association (AIIEA) is the oldest and largest trade union in India’s public sector insurance industry, covering both the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) and the Public Sector General Insurance Companies (PSGICs). It commands the support and allegiance of an overwhelming 80 per cent of the employees in the insurance industry.

The unique thing about the AIIEA is that it was born in 1951, five years before the nationalisation of life insurance business and formation of LIC in 1956. Struggle for nationalisation of life insurance business was, in fact, the first major political struggle of the AIIEA. Right from its inception, the AIIEA has never compromised on the two foundational principles of the organisation: enhance the working and life conditions of the insurance employees and play an important role in the broader democratic struggles for making India a just, fair and equal society.

The struggle for nationalisation of insurance in the fifties, struggle for standardization of wages (of employees working in over 200 private companies) after nationalisation, struggle against automation in the sixties, struggle against the dark days of emergency and the struggle to fight out lock-outs of six divisions in the seventies,  struggle against the ill motivated moves to split LIC into five or more independent corporations in the eighties, the uncompromising struggle for three decades beginning in the nineties to protect insurance industry in the public sector, the brilliant struggle against 18%  GST in life and health insurance premium and innumerable struggles to secure wage hikes for insurance employees- all bear the unmistakable imprint of the two foundational principles.

Women employees constitute around 30 per cent of the total employee strength in LIC. Around 80 per cent of them are the members of our organisation. A good number of women employees are our members in Public Sector General Insurance Companies as well.

The AIIEA has learnt with humility that it alone cannot bring about any radical change in the society howsoever pious its intentions might be. There has to be a broader unity of the people. But this unity cannot come merely by preaching others. We are aware that no bigger union would listen to our sanctimonious talks on the virtues of unity and united struggles unless we do something more than mere preaching. We therefore believe in building solidarities. The AIIEA has participated in almost all the General Strikes called by the united working class movement of the country in the post-neoliberal period. The AIIEA has always come to the rescue of the hapless in times of natural calamities (floods, cyclones, earthquakes, tsunami etc.); our support and solidarity to the farmers’ organisations in their struggle against the farm bills and electricity bills, our humanitarian interventions during the Covid lockdown are some examples in this direction.

The AIIEA entered into its Platinum Jubilee Year (75 years) on 1^st July 2025. The AIIEA envisions a society based on the ideals of justice, equality, fairness and fraternity……..