New Delhi: The Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), the trade union affiliate of the RSS, has threatened to launch a nationwide agitation if the Modi government does not fix the issues it has with the formula for minimum wages.
The union wants the government to tweak the current formula to consider six units as a family as opposed to the current three. One member of a family represents one unit. According to the current formula, with the family unit as three, the national minimum wage presumes that each wage-earner supports three people.
The BMS also wants anganwadi, ASHA, mid-day meal and MGNREGA workers among others to be brought under the minimum wage law.
In a resolution passed during a national meet from 16-18 August, the BMS has said it is against many of the “anti-worker provisions” in the Labour Codes as well. The organisation will carry out an awareness drive on the issue across the country between 25 September and 2 October.
The resolution slammed the Dr Anoop Satpathy Committee, which had in January recommended that the government increase the family units from 3 to 3.6. The Sangh has lashed out at the decimal point in the recommendation.
“It means the committee has not even recommended four units,” the resolution said. “The BMS is of the opinion that such impractical recommendations on minimum wage should be put in cold storage and the government should fix the minimum wage formula keeping in mind the ground realities.”
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BMS wants the family to be six units
The Sangh affiliate is insistent that the government increase the number of family units to six, to include two children and ageing parents.
“The government has to take into consideration a number of issues including the fact that in 2010, the then government formulated a law for senior citizens,” BMS national president C.K. Saji Narayanan said. “Under that law, if any person does not take care of his/her ageing parents, the parents can move court. So a family has to take care of the parents; this should be included while fixing the minimum wages.”
Its resolution also pointed out that while the government has relied on social conditions in 1957, ground realities were different in 2019. “The Constitutional conditions have also changed in these years. In 1957, the voting right was granted at the age of 21, while now it is granted at the age of 18,” the resolution said. “With the increase in education level, the duration of the children staying in the family has increased. Therefore, considering two units of children and two units of husband and wife, these should be counted as four units.”
It added that with 2010 law, parents should be added, bringing the total to six.
Organisation welcomes labour law reforms
The BMS resolution, however, welcomed the Modi government’s decision to reform labour laws and merge 44 labour laws into four wage codes.
The Code on Wages 2019 that paves the way for the introduction of mandatory minimum wages at the national level for 50 crore workers was notified by the government after it received assent from the President on 8 August.
The Lok Sabha had on 30 July cleared The Code on Wages Bill 2019, which received the Rajya Sabha’s nod on 2 August. The law enables the government to introduce minimum wages for workers besides addressing issues such as a delay in payment of wages to employees.
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