Minimum Wage
The response to the global economic crisis has been largely in the form of fiscal stimulus aimed at assisting the private sector to cover their reduced profits along with fiscal ‘austerity’ measures to contain public spending. The austerity measures amongst other effects resulted in large scale reduction in social spending, freezing both the total outlay for the NREGA and wages paid under it and reduction in public investment resulting in both job cuts and a sharp downward pressure on real wages. Thus workers across the world today are faced with ever soaring prices of food and other wage goods along with continuing erosion of their wages, both nominal and real. The only legal protection left with the largest section of the working people today is that of the minimum wages legislation. This too is under tremendous attack as contractualisation and non-payment of minimum wages is being justified under the pretext of crisis.
Minimum wage rates across all states are far from being anywhere near the wage rate that the 15th ILC advised which was later revised further through successive Supreme Court directives. The prevailing rates are less than the subsistence wage and far from being a living wage and yet it is the most violated legislation. The minimum wage legislation is also restricted to only scheduled employments.NTUI affiliates have been demanding across sectors and regions for a universal need based minimum wage indexed to inflation for social development. Affiliates organising rural workers have also raised the demand for a need based national rural floor wage indexed to inflation below which no wage can fall.