The Code on Wages: Object, Application and Commencement

In one line

The Code on Wages 2019 is now the whole law of minimum wages, payment of wages, bonus and equal pay in India; it replaced four Acts, it has been fully in force since 21 November 2025, and unlike the Act it replaced it covers every employment rather than a list.

In exam wording: the Code on Wages, 2019 (Act 29 of 2019) received the assent of the President on 8 August 2019, extends to the whole of India under section 1(2), and was brought into force under section 1(3) in two instalments, on 18 December 2020 by notification S.O. 4604(E) and on 21 November 2025 by notification S.O. 5322(E); section 69(1) repeals the Payment of Wages Act 1936, the Minimum Wages Act 1948, the Payment of Bonus Act 1965 and the Equal Remuneration Act 1976.

Why this chapter comes first

Module I opened with the same warning about the Industrial Relations Code and it applies here with one addition.

Everything a student can find on "minimum wages" or "payment of wages" in India was written about four Acts that no longer exist. The Payment of Wages Act 1936, the Minimum Wages Act 1948, the Payment of Bonus Act 1965 and the Equal Remuneration Act 1976 were the whole of this subject for between forty-three and eighty-nine years, and they were all repealed on the same day.

And the addition is this: the commencement of this Code is genuinely complicated, in a way the Industrial Relations Code's was not. That Code came into force by a one-sentence notification. This one came in two instalments five years apart, and the second notification, read on its own, appears to leave holes. It does not, and understanding why is the first thing to get right about this Module.

Some words this chapter uses

Assent is the President's signature on a Bill both Houses have passed. It makes an Act; it does not make it operate.

Commencement is the date a provision begins to operate. Section 1(3) leaves it to notification and permits different dates for different provisions.

Instalment, used here for convenience, means a group of provisions brought into force on one date.

Scheduled employment was the expression in the Minimum Wages Act 1948 for an employment listed in its Schedule, to which alone minimum wages applied.

Floor wage is the national minimum below which no State's minimum wage may fall, in section 9. It is new.

Section 1: the Code's name, reach and commencement

Section 1(1): the short title, the Code on Wages, 2019.

Section 1(2): "It extends to the whole of India."

Section 1(3): it shall come into force on such date as the Central Government may, by notification, appoint; and different dates may be appointed for different provisions of this Code, and any reference in a provision to the commencement of the Code is a reference to the coming into force of that provision.