BALARAM ABAJI PATIL Vs. M C RAGOJIWALLA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) TWO questions arise for decision in this petition filed under Article 227 of the Constitution of India, and the questions are: (1) whether wages which are required to be paid by statute, over and above the wages stipulated by contract, fall within the definition of "wages" in the Payment of Wages Act; and (2) whether in the case of workers covered by both the Payment of Wages Act and the Minimum Wages Act, the jurisdiction of the Authority under the Minimum Wages Act to direct the employer to pay the unpaid balance of minimum wages is exclusive, so as to oust the jurisdiction of the Authority under the Payment of Wages Act to grant tha same or similar relief.

(2.) THE facts on which these questions arise are these: -- The petitioners were employed by respondent No. 2 for the work of preparing salt in certain salt pans. The concern of respondent No. 2 was a factory under the Indian Factories Act, and the petitioners are accordingly covered by the Payment of Wages Act. By a notification issued on 16th June 1953 under Section 27 of the Minimum Wages Act, the category of employment to which the petitioners belonged was brought within the purview of that Act, and by the same notification the minimum- wages payable to the workers in that category were declared to be Rs. 56 per month. Under Section 12 of the Minirmim Wages Act, the employer was liable to pay, and the workers entitled to receive, wages at a rate not less than the minimum rate fixed by the notification. Contracting out of the benefits granted by the Act was prevented by Section 25, which provided that any contract or agreement, whether made before or after the commencement of the Act, whereby an employee either relinquished or reduced his right to a minimum rate of wages, was null and void in so far as it purports to do so. In spite of these provisions, respondent No. 2 and the petitioners agreed that the petitioners should be paid wages at a rate varying between Rs. 41 and Rs. 43 per month. The petitioners, having been paid contractual wages and not minimum wages for the period between 1st April 1954 and 7th June 1954, filed an application on 30th April 1955, for the recovery of the balance. The Authority before whom the application was filed was constituted an Authority both under the Payment of Wages Act and under the Minimum Wages Act, and the petitioners' application was initially filed under both the Acts. Later, however, the petitioners filed a written statement (a purshis) before the Authority stating that their application should be treated as an application under the Payment of Wage Act only. The reason for filing this purshis was presumbly this, that by virtue of an amendment introduced by the Bombay Legislature in the Payment of Wages Act, the period of limitation for filing an application thereunder was extended to one year, whereas the period of limitation for applications under the Minimum Wages Act continued to be six months. Besides the present petitioners, several other workers of the same category had also filed several applications before the same Authority against the same or other employers, and all these applications were consolidated and heard together by the Authority. Respondent No. 2 and the other employers did not resist the workers' claims on the merits, but raised a number of objections to the jurisdiction of the Authority. We are here concerned with two such objections, one of which was refected and the other accepted by the learned Authority. The learned Authority rejected the employers' contention that the Authority under the Minimum Wages Act has exclusive jurisdiction to issue directions to an employer for the payment of the difference between minimum wages and the amounts actually paid. The learned Authority held that, where the workers concerned are covered by both the Acts, the remedy to apply under the Payment of Wages Act was not barred on account of their having a similar remedy under the Minimum Wages Act. The learned Authority, however, accepted another objection taken on behalf of the employers, that the jurisdiction of the Authority under the Payment of Wages Act was confined to ihe granting of wages stipulated by contract and did not extend to claims based upon statute. Being of this view, he rejected all the applications filed before him. While doing so, he gave a finding with regard to the amounts to which the workers wouid have been entitled in each case, if their applications were tenable. The amount which he found due to the present petitioners was Rs, 587. 47.

(3.) DEALING first with the question whether the definition of 'wages' in the Payment of Wages Act covers statutory wages as distinguished from contractual wages, we are satisfied that the learned Authority was in error in finding this issue in tho negative. The present case is concerned with the definition of "wages" in Section 2 (vi) of the Payment of Wages Act prior to the amendment introduced therein by Act No. 68 of 1957. The definition, as it then stood, and in so far as it is material, was in the following terms:--