Cabinet likely to discuss amendments to wages Act

As trade unions strike work for two days from tomorrow, the Cabinet is likely to consider the proposal to amend the Minimum Wages Act, 1948.

At present, 15 states and Union territories have fixed wages below Rs 115 a day — the national floor level fixed by the Centre. As the national floor rate is not binding on state governments and employers, concurrence of the states is necessary. Also, while 1,679 scheduled employments are in states’ domain, only 45 are with the Centre.

Trade unions are demanding that the floor rate be raised to Rs 333 a day and made statutory.

In 2009, the proposal to amend the Minimum Wages Act was taken to the Cabinet. The proposal was to amend the Minimum Wages Act to bring all employments under it by deleting the provision that bars state governments from fixing minimum wages for a scheduled employment where only 1,000 employees or less are engaged in. It envisaged making the national floor rate statutory.

Most states have agreed to making national floor rate of wages statutory.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs is also likely to discuss a proposal from the civil aviation ministry to rationalise the payments and allowances of Air India employees in line with the prevailing industry practice.

This could link overall payment of pilots to the current industry standards.

According to sources, the civil aviation ministry’s recommendations are in line with the report of the Implementation-cum-Anomalies Rectification Committee, which was constituted to implement the Justice Dharmadhikari report.

The report had favoured profit or productivity related pay for Air India employees in place of productivity-linked incentives.

However, officials said that after an internal committee analysed the payment structure, it was found that in some cases, pilots got flying allowances as part of the overall pay. These account for 70 to 80 per cent of their earnings.