Advisory Boards, Dues, Claims and the Inspector-cum-Facilitator

In one line

An Advisory Board with one third women advises on minimum wages, a Gazetted Officer decides money claims within three years with power to award ten times the amount as compensation, an appeal lies within ninety days, and an Inspector-cum-Facilitator advises before he inspects.

In exam wording: Chapters V, VI and VII of the Code on Wages 2019 provide the machinery of the Code. Section 42 requires the Central Government to constitute a Central Advisory Board and every State Government a State Advisory Board, each tripartite and each with one-third women members, to advise on the fixation and revision of minimum wages and on increasing employment opportunities for women. Sections 43 and 44 fix responsibility for payment and provide for undisbursed dues on death. Section 45 creates a claims authority not below the rank of a Gazetted Officer, before whom a claim may be filed within three years, and which may award compensation up to ten times the claim. Section 49 gives an appeal within ninety days. Section 50 requires registers, a notice board and wage slips. And section 51 replaces the old Inspector with an Inspector-cum-Facilitator whose first listed function is to advise.

Why the law has this at all

A right without machinery is a slogan, and the four Acts the Code replaced had four separate machineries. A worker underpaid his minimum wage went to one authority under the Minimum Wages Act 1948; one whose wages were delayed or unlawfully deducted went to another under the Payment of Wages Act 1936; one denied bonus went to a third; one denied equal pay went to a fourth. Each had its own limitation period, its own form, and its own appeal.

The Code's first contribution is that there is now one door. Section 45 covers the claims which arise under the provisions of this Code, without distinguishing minimum wages from delayed wages from bonus from equal remuneration.

Its second contribution is a single limitation period of three years. The repealed Acts had short periods, six months and twelve months among them, and the commonest way a genuine claim died was delay. Three years, with power to condone beyond it for sufficient cause, is a substantial gain.

Its third is that the claim need not be brought by the worker alone. Section 45(4) lets a registered trade union of which he is a member, or the Inspector-cum-Facilitator, file it; and section 45(5) permits a single application on behalf of any number of employees. A worker still in employment rarely sues his employer for a month's wages. A union does.

Its fourth is deterrence. Section 45(2) allows compensation up to ten times the claim determined. Where the sanction is only to pay what was owed, the employer who withholds loses nothing by trying.