The Government on Friday said it proposes to prescribe statutory national-level minimum wages for all kinds of employments, which will be revised every five years on the basis of NSSO consumer expenditure survey.
Replying to a Calling Attention Motion in the Rajya Sabha over the recent all-India strike by Trade Unions and workers of organised and unorganised sector, , labour Minister Mallikarjun Kharge said the Union Cabinet approved the amendments to prescribe a National Floor level Minimum Wages (NFlMW) on February 22 and a bill will be brought before Parliament in “due course”.
A proposal to bring parity in the wages of contract workers with those on the rolls is also “under active consideration” of the government, he said. On the issue of changes in the Minimum Wages Act, he said at present the provisions of the Act are not applicable to those employments where the total number of workers in a state is less than one thousand.
BJP’s Prakash Javadekar said it was an “anti-labour” government which failed to address the plight of about 40 million workers who were on a two-day strike on February 20 and 21.
“They had given a three-months notice for strike but the government woke up three days before the strike and Group of Ministers held its meeting,” he said, adding there was no assurance from government side. He said contract workers including those in media worked for longer hours and and got lesser wages and sought justice for them.
Tapan Kumar Sen (CPI-M) alleged that the government was there to protect the interests entities like Vodafone and British Petroleum and not the common workers who were agitating for last four years. “You are showering corporate houses with gifts in every budget,” he said, adding it was high time that justice was delivered to workers.
D Bandyopadhyay (CPI-M) said casualisation of labour in regular jobs had gone up and
Government has not ratified two important IlO conventions.