The Hindu Business Line : TN move to bring textile workers under Minimum Wages Act hits snag

TASMA maintained that wage policy for the textile industry, being an organised industry, was governed by awards/unit-level settlements passed as awards by tribunals since 1958

Coimbatore March 15 The Tamil Nadu Government's move to bring textile mill workers under the Minimum Wages Act has met with a roadblock with one of the major textile mill management bodies obtaining an interim stay from the Madras High Court against any action to implement the amended provision of the Act.

The Dindigul-based Tamilnadu Spinning Mills Association (TASMA) has obtained an interim stay of operation of the amended notification of the State Department of Labour and Employment which had brought the employment in textile industry under the Minimum Wages Act of 1948 by including textile in the list of scheduled industries in January this year.

The interim stay was ordered on March 14, by Mr Justice D Murugan on a writ petition filed by TASMA on behalf of member-mills.

TASMA in its petition maintained that wage policy for the textile industry, being an organised industry, had been governed by awards/unit-level settlements passed as awards by tribunals since 1958 and hence it could not be covered under the Act which is essentially to protect the unorganised and sweat labour.

The textile body noted that a Government-appointed special industrial tribunal formed in 2001 was currently adjudicating the revision and refixing of wages for various categories of employees of textile mills. Many wage awards were passed by the tribunal.

Even as the adjudication process is pending before the tribunal, any attempt to proceed under the Wages Act would jeopardise the working of the tribunal, TASMA said and wanted the court to declare the government notification as illegal.

The Government had notified on January 3, amending the part-I of the schedule of the industries, inclusion of employment in textile and among the various categories of textile industry - composite textile mills, spinning, weaving mills, open-end spinning - as coming under the Act. Those engaged in different processing such as blow-room, carding, drawing, winding, doubling, reeling and warping are also covered under the amended Act now.

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