Representatives of employers and employees expressed divergent views at a consultation held by the Ministry of Labour Santosh Kumar Gangwar on Labour Code Rules.

The Sangh Parivar-led trade union BMS demanded that the wage definition limiting allowances to 50 per cent of total salary should not be freezed, since it is the mandate of the Supreme Court in Vivekananda Vidyalaya case of 2019 . The organisation also said that the Group IV Security case previously has mandated 100 per cent allowances to be part of salary.

The BMS demanded scrapping of spread over to 12 hours as majority of the countries in the world do not have provisions for spread over. “Only overtime with double wages should be provided. Family should consist of six units for the purpose of calculating minimum wages. Wage board for Journalist etc is to be reinstated,” they demanded.

They argued that division of metro, non-metro and rural rates of wages will promote regional inequality leading to migration of workers to metros for higher wages. “Instead, national minimum wage which is prevalent in half the countries of the world is to be implemented in India also,” they said.

‘Need more discussion’

The joint platform of ten other Central Trade Unions asked Gangwar in a letter to conduct a physical meeting for discussion on framing of rules for each of the four codes separately for any fruitful discussions in the matter. They said this kind of an exercise, involving more than a score of stakeholders, through one single day video conference, on the draft rules of all the four labour codes, is meant only for the record and would serve no fruitful purpose.

The CII said in its presentation that It would be advisable to clarify with illustrations that contractual bonus, performance linked bonus, joining bonus, employee referrals, non-commission based incentives / rewards, etc. will not form a part of wages as defined under the Wage Code.

“The term total remuneration should be clearly defined so as to avoid any confusion and ensure simplicity and smooth implementation. Total remuneration should include those allowances which are ordinarily and regularly paid to an employee on a monthly basis including Basic wages. This may probably be also the intent of the definition. However, mentioning it clearly will help in uniform understanding,” the CII said in its presentation.

They said time interval for revision of dearness allowance shall be once in a year and preferably in April as is the practice in some States

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