Notice of Periods of Work and Annual Leave with Wages

In one line

A worker who has put in a hundred and eighty days gets one day of paid leave for every twenty he worked, can carry thirty days forward, and is paid for what he never took when he leaves.

In exam wording: section 31 of the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code 2020 requires a notice of periods of work to be displayed and maintained, and section 32 entitles every worker who has worked one hundred and eighty days or more in a calendar year to leave with wages at the rate of one day for every twenty days worked, with a carry forward limited to thirty days, encashment of the excess, and wages in lieu of leave on discharge, dismissal, quitting, superannuation or death.

Why the law has these at all

Section 31 exists so that the hours rules can be checked. A limit of eight hours a day is worth nothing if nobody outside the office knows what the periods of work are supposed to be. The notice is the published version of the establishment's own timetable, and section 31(3) stops it from being changed quietly.

Section 32 exists because a worker who never rests is worn out by fifty, and because leave he cannot take or carry is not leave. Hence the three separate mechanisms: a right to take it, a right to carry it forward, and a right to be paid for it where it is refused or where he leaves.

The provision that shows the drafter thought about how leave actually fails is clause (vii)(b): leave which the worker applied for and was refused may be carried forward without any limit. The thirty day cap punishes hoarding, not an employer's refusal.

Some words this chapter uses

Calendar year is the year from 1 January to 31 December. Layoff is the employer's failure or inability to give employment to a worker on his rolls. Prefixed or suffixed holiday is a holiday immediately before or after a period of leave. Encashment is being paid money instead of taking the leave. Adolescent takes its meaning from the Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act 1986. Superannuated means retired on reaching the age fixed for it.

Section 31: the notice of periods of work

Section 31(1). There shall be displayed and correctly maintained in every establishment a notice of periods of work, showing clearly for every day the periods during which workers may be required to work in accordance with the Code.

Section 31(2). The form of the notice, the manner of its display, and the manner in which it is sent to the Inspector-cum-Facilitator, are prescribed by the appropriate Government.