Govt forms expert panel to finalise national mandatory minimum wage

The six-member economist-bureaucrat panel will give recommendations to the government on Minimum Wages and National Floor Wage. Photo: Reuters

1 min read . Updated: 03 Jun 2021, 02:24 PM IST Prashant K. Nanda

This is the second committee the union labour ministry is setting up after it junked the Anoop Satpathy Committee report in 2019

New Delhi: The government on Thursday notified an expert committee to recommend a mandatory minimum wage as envisaged in the new labour codes.

The six-member economist-bureaucrat panel will give recommendations to the government “on Minimum Wages and National Floor Wage. To arrive at the wage rates, the group will look into the international best practices on the wages and evolve a scientific criteria and methodology for fixation of wage".

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The group has been constituted “for a period of three years from the date of notification", which indicate that a national minimum wage rate may not come into force in 2021 even though the wage code on labour was passed by the parliament in August 2019.

This is the second committee the union labour ministry is setting up after it junked the Anoop Satpathy Committee report in 2019. The panel had suggested a national minimum wage at Rs.375 per day and ₹9,750 per month. In addition to the minimum monthly wage of ₹9,750, the seven-member Satpathy Committee panel had also suggested that a housing allowance of ₹1,430 should be provided for city-based workers.

The labour code on wages has a provision for a ‘mandatory national wage floor’, the minimum wage in other words. States cannot pay below this mandatory minimum wage floor which will be set by the Centre when the wage code gets parliamentary approval.

The new expert panel is chaired by Ajit Mishra, professor and director of Institute of Economic Growth, and comprises Tarika Chakraborty of IIM Calcutta, Anushree Sinha, senior fellow at NCAER, Vibha Bhalla, joint secretary in the labour ministry, H. Srinivas, director general of V.V. Giri National Labour Institute, and D.P.S. Negi, senior labour and employment advisor in the labour ministry.

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