Government to table minimum guaranteed wages bill in Winter Session

New Delhi, Sep 15 (KNN) The Labour Ministry is set to table Draft Code on Wages in the coming winter session of Parliament after which the guaranteed minimum wages would become a reality for the country’s entire workforce.

The passage of the Bill would also mark the beginning of the long-pending overhaul of labour laws in the country.

Talking to reporters on the sidelines of an event here, Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya said the group of ministers (GoM), headed by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, would on Thursday deliberate on the draft code that also seeks to streamline the definition of wages by amalgamating four wage-related statutes – The Minimum Wages Act, 1948, the Payment of Wages Act, 1936, the Payment of Bonus Act, 1965 and the Equal Remuneration Act, 1976.

He said that the tripartite meeting on the wage code is over. The GoM will deliberate on the code and after this, the draft would be sent for the Cabinet approval. This will be tabled in the winter session of Parliament.

Dattatreya also informed that the GoM would also discuss the Small Factories (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Services) Bill, 2014 in tomorrow’s meeting. The Bill seeks to combine provisions of various labour laws applicable to small factories, facilitating ease of compliance and reporting.

After taking charge of office, the Narendra Modi dispensation embarked on labour reforms aimed at ensuring the ease of doing business in which India is lagging at the 130 spot in the world. The plan is to amalgamate 44 extant labour-related Acts into four codes. Code on Wages is one of them. The other three are code on industrial relations, code on social security and code on working condition. (KNN Bureau)