On July 14, 2021, the Jharkhand Government has issued the Draft Code on Wages (Jharkhand) Rules, 2021. The Rules provide 9 Chapters further divided into 56 sections.
Key features of the Rules
- Manner of calculating minimum rate of wages: Minimum rate of wages shall be fixed on the day basis keeping in few of following criteria:
- The standard working class family which includes a spouse and two children apart from the earning worker an equivalent of three adult consumption units;
- a net intake of 2700 calories per day consumption unit; 66 mtrs cloth per year per standard working class family;
- housing rent expenditure to constitute 10 percent of food and clothing expenditure.
- fuel, electricity and other miscellaneous items of expenditure to constitute 20 percent of minimum wage;
- expenditure for children education, medical requirement, recreation, and expenditure on contingencies to constitute 25 percent of minimum wages;
- When the rate of wages for a day is fixed, then, such amount shall be divided by eight for fixing the rate of wages for an hour and multiplied by twenty-six for fixing the rate of wages for a month and in such division and multiplication the factors of one-half and more than one-half shall be rounded as next figure and the factors less than one-half shall be ignored.
2. Number of hours of work which shall constitute a normal working day shall be 9 hours.
3. An employee shall be allowed a day of rest every week which shall ordinarily be Sunday, but the employer may fix any other day of the week as the rest day for any employee or class of employees.
- Any such employee shall not be required or allowed to work on the rest day unless he has or will have a substituted rest day for a whole day on one of the five days immediately before or after the rest day.
4. Where an employee in an employment works on a shift which extends beyond midnight then:
- a holiday for the whole day means a period of twenty four consecutive hours beginning from the time when his shift ends; and
- the following day in such case shall be deemed to be the period of twenty-four hours beginning from the time when such shift ends, and the hours after midnight during which such employee was engaged in work shall be counted towards the previous day.
5. The longer wage period for the purpose of minimum rate of wage shall be by the month.
6. The State Government shall fix the minimum wage not below the Floor Wages so fixed by the Central Government.