A view of High Court of Karnataka.
| Photo Credit: V. Sreenivasa Murthy
In what is being perceived as a victory for nearly 1.7 crore workers in unorganised sector across Karnataka, the State government has been directed by the Karnataka High Court to re-calculate the minimum wages that had been fixed in 2022. The government has been asked to follow the guidelines fixed by the Supreme Court in its landmark judgement in 1992 while doing so.
The State Government had not undertaken a ground survey to assess the present-day prices of essential commodities, but arbitrarily enhanced wages between 5% and 10% for 34 scheduled employments.
Petition by union
The court, in a recent order based on a petition filed by the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), quashed the notification and asked the government to redo the notification strictly following the norms fixed in 1992 by the Supreme Court in the case of Reptakos Brett to determine the minimum wages. Justice Jyoti Mulimani has also set a deadline for the government to complete the entire redo process within two months.
There are 105 scheduled employments in the State that are under the Minimum Wages Act, and the minimum wages are revised every five years as per the statutory requirement.
In Karnataka, the government captures the data on essential commodities from 16 centres, but this was not undertaken by the Labour department before the minimum wages revision. The department had argued that such a data is only essential for fixing wages but not for revision. The court, however, did not agree with the Labour Department’s contention.
While the previous BJP government had revised wages and notified in 2022 for 34 employments whose five year revision period had lapsed, the draft notification was ready for 10 more scheduled employments. Labour Minister Santhosh Lad recently sent back the proposal for these 10 scheduled employments, asking the Department to conduct the survey and fix the minimum wages as per law.
Foundation for other States
AITUC Karnataka President H.V. Anantha Subbarao welcomed the High Court verdict, and stated that it will not only benefit the working class of the State, but also set the foundation for bringing in a scientific, rational and legally established process for revision of minimum wages.
“The court has also clarified a distinction cannot be made between fixing of minimum wages and the revision as it would lead to anomaly between scheduled employments,” he said. He has also urged the State Government to expeditiously implement the court order to bring relief to the working class that has been affected by unprecedented price rise.