The Code on Wages was notified by the Government of India in the year

Correct — A, 2019. The Code on Wages was passed by Parliament in the monsoon session of 2019 and received the President's assent on 8 August 2019, the date on which it was notified in the Gazette. It is the first of the four labour codes that consolidated a large body of central labour legislation, and it stands apart from the other three by a full year: the Industrial Relations Code, the Code on Social Security and the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code were all enacted in 2020. The Code on Wages subsumes four earlier statutes — the Payment of Wages Act 1936, the Minimum Wages Act 1948, the Payment of Bonus Act 1965 and the Equal Remuneration Act 1976 — and extends minimum wage coverage to all employees rather than only to scheduled employments.

• (b)2020 — 2020 is the year of the other three labour codes — industrial relations, social security, and occupational safety, health and working conditions — but not of the Code on Wages.
• (c)2021 — 2021 saw drafting of rules under the codes rather than the enactment of any of them.
• (d)2022 — 2022 is well after all four codes had been passed; the debate by then was about the date of their coming into force.

The four labour codes replace twenty-nine central labour laws with a consolidated framework. The Code on Wages, 2019 covers wages and bonus and introduces a statutory floor wage for the country, below which no state may fix its minimum wage. Its most significant widening is the definition of employee: minimum wage protection, previously limited to scheduled employments, extends to organised and unorganised workers alike. The other three codes deal with trade unions and industrial disputes, with social security and gratuity, and with workplace safety and conditions.

Grouped legislation is asked precisely because candidates remember the group and forget that its members were not all passed together. The reliable memory here is one and three: one code in 2019, three in 2020. A second anchor is the subject matter, since wages was the least contested of the four and therefore moved first, while the industrial relations and social security codes were referred to a standing committee and returned in 2020. Distinguish enactment from commencement as well — a code can be on the statute book for years before its provisions are brought into force.

• The Code on Wages received assent and was notified on 8 August 2019.
• The other three labour codes — industrial relations, social security, and occupational safety — date from 2020.
• The Code on Wages subsumes the Payment of Wages Act, the Minimum Wages Act, the Payment of Bonus Act and the Equal Remuneration Act.
• It provides for a statutory floor wage set by the central government, below which state minimum wages cannot fall.
• Minimum wage protection under the Code extends to all employees, not only to scheduled employments.

• Assuming all four labour codes were passed in the same year.
• Confusing the year of enactment with the year the code was brought into force.
• Mixing the Code on Wages with the older Minimum Wages Act it replaced.

Asked as a single-year recall item on one member of a group of statutes, where the group's other members share a different year.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the four labour codes was enacted in a different year from the other three?

  • (a)Code on Wages
  • (b)Industrial Relations Code
  • (c)Code on Social Security
  • (d)Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code

  Answer(a) Code on Wages — 2019, while the other three were passed in 2020.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Code on Wages provides for which of the following?

  • (a)A national floor wage below which state minimum wages cannot be fixed
  • (b)A uniform national minimum wage identical in every state
  • (c)Abolition of the concept of minimum wages
  • (d)Wage fixation only for scheduled employments

  Answer(a) A national floor wage below which state minimum wages cannot be fixed.