Ushering in the year of the Rooster

Equal Pay for Equal Work: A Constitutional Goal Achieved

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This article was written by Rudra Srivastava and Ritika Modee (Singhania and Partners), one of our key authors for our best-selling Asia Pacific Employment Law (HELP) subscription.

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One of the trends in the labour market of India that has been persistent and has become a reason of worry is the practice by employers to keep large section of workforce particularly the blue collar¹ as temporary workers. Recruited through an elaborate system of contractors, these workers, though they are as competent as their “regular” counterparts, are denied not only the same wages and emoluments for the same work done but also other benefits. Such workers constitute almost 50%, sometimes more, of the workforce in many organisations and even in government departments². 

Constitution of India in its preamble talks about equality in terms of both status and opportunity. The Constitution does not categorically provide for “Equal pay for equal work” with reference to the permanent and temporary or contract labour. The Supreme Court of India in its landmark judgement State of Punjab and ors v Jagjit Singh and ors , on 26th October, 2016 while taking a step in furtherance of social justice has conferred the right of equal pay for equal work upon the temporary workers vis-a vis the permanent workers. On a constructive reading of Article 14³ , Article 15(1)⁴, Article 16(1)⁵ and Article 39 (d)⁶ it may be said that the Hon’ble Supreme Court has expanded the application of equal pay for equal work so as to cover within the ambit of the principle the right of temporary labour to receive same wages/salary as their permanent counterparts provided they are engaged in same work of equal difficulty and responsibility.

The question that arose for determination before the Hon’ble Supreme Court in the aforesaid matter was:

What ‘device’?

By Aaron Bromley and Dave Ananth, Ernst & Young Tax Consultants Sdn Bhd

The GST Act 2014 will have two new sections - Sections 34A and 34B - introducing the potential application of a device to monitor sales activity. Internationally, such a device is commonly known as an ‘Electronic Fiscal Device’ (EFD). The application of such a device, for any registered person as prescribed by the Minister, comes into effect on 1 January 2017.

Section 34A of the GST Act states that a registered person may be required to provide information on supplies made and payments received by way of a prescribed device, to be installed at the taxpayer’s business premises. Presumably this will be integrated or configured with the Point of Sale (PoS) system (eg cash till).

With the installation, RMCD will have access to information on all sales made by the company and the payments received, on a "real-time" basis. The purpose would appear to be to capture transactions potentially not reported in the GST returns filed by the person (or in the case of a person not registered, but required to be so, those transactions not reported at all). Hence, RMCD is targeting undisclosed supplies and potential fraud.

It should be noted that the Director General of Customs may approve any person to install, configure and integrate this device. This means an independent contractor can be given permission to install this device into the taxpayer’s system, and may be responsible for the support and maintenance of the device. That person may also be authorised to carry out an inspection where there is cause to suspect interference, damage, destruction or manipulation of the data stored, or obstruction of the lawful use of the device.