Fixed Minimum Wages for Workers

Date : 22.3.2017

Fixed Minimum Wages for Workers

The Minimum Wages Act, 1948 provides for both the Central and State Governments as the appropriate Governments to fix, review and revise the minimum wages of the workers employed in the scheduled employments under their respective jurisdictions. Presently, there are 45 scheduled employments in the Central Sphere while in the State Sphere the number of such employments is 1709. 

The Minimum Wages Act, 1948 is implemented by the Centre as well as the States in respect of their respective jurisdiction. In the Central Sphere, the enforcement is secured through the Inspecting Officers of the Chief Labour Commissioner (Central) commonly designated as Central Industrial Relations Machinery (CIRM), the compliance in the State sphere is ensured through the State Enforcement Machinery. They conduct regular inspections and in the event of detection of any case of non-payment or under-payment of minimum wages, they advise the employers to make payment of the shortfall of wages. In case of non-compliance, penal provisions against the defaulting employers are invoked. Details of enforcement of Minimum Wages Act, 1948 during 2014-15, 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 (upto December, 2016) are given below.

S .No.	Particulars	2014-15	2015-16	2016-17 (upto Dec., 2016)
1	No. of Inspections Conducted	6582	9803	5732
2	No. of Irregularities detected	68747	75938	39837
3	No. Irregularities Rectified	87809	46467	40541
4	No. of Prosecutions Launched	3774	1549	1636
5	No. of Convictions	2782	1476	1386

Claim cases under Minimum Wages Act

YEAR	CLAIMS			AMOUNT AWARDED (in Rs.)
	B/F	FILED	DECIDED	AWARDED	RECOVERERD	PAID TO WORKES
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
2013-14	3855	3000	2838	123030072	50794115	33439937
2014-15	3980	2167	248	59856881	35892244	30526714
2015-16	3672	743	1796	66654417	44128036	34879425
2016-17 (upto Dec., 2016)	2610	719	827	74937048	41241934	38196925

This information was given by Shri Bandaru Dattatreya, the Minister of State (IC) for Labour and Employment, in written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha today.

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