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Unit 9: Minimum Wages Act, 1948

(c) provide for payment of work on a day of rest at a rate not less than the overtime rate. Notes
The above stated provision shall apply to following classes of employees only to such extent
and subject to such conditions as may be prescribed:
(a) Employees engaged on urgent work, or in any emergency, which could not have been
foreseen or prevented;
(b) Employees engaged in work in the nature of preparatory or complementary work which
must necessarily be carried on outside the limits laid down for the general working in the
employment concerned;
(c) Employees whose employment is essentially intermittent;

(d) Employees engaged in any work which for technical reasons, has to be completed before the
duty is over;

(e) Employees engaged in any work which could not be carried on except at times dependent on
the irregular action of natural forces.
For the purpose of clause (c) employment of an employee is essentially intermittent when it is
declared to be so by the appropriate Government on ground that the daily hours of the employee,
or if these be no daily hours of duty as such for the employee, the hours of duty, normally
includes period of inaction during which the employee may be on duty but is not called upon to
display either physical activity or sustained attention.
There is correlation between minimum rates of wages and hours of work. Minimum wages are
to be fixed on basis of standard normal working hours, namely 48 hours a week; Benode Bihari
Shah v. State of W.B., 1976 Lab I.C. 523 (Cal).

9.3.5 Payment of Overtime (Section 14)

Section 14 provides that when an employee, whose minimum rate of wages is fixed under this
Act by the hours, the day or by such longer wage period as may be prescribed, works on any day
in excess of the number of hours constituting a normal working day, the employer shall pay him
for every hour or part of an hour so worked in excess at the overtime rate fixed under this Act or
under any other law of the appropriate Government for the time being in force whichever is
higher. Payment for overtime work can be claimed only by the employees who are getting
minimum rate of wages under the Act and not by those getting better wages (1998 LLJ I SC 815).

9.3.6 Wages of a Worker who Works less than Normal Working Day
(Section 15)

Where the rate of wages has been fixed under the Act by the day for an employee and if he works
on any day on which he employed for a period less than the requisite number of hours constituting
a normal working day, he shall be entitled to receive wages for that day as if he had worked for
a full working day.
Provided that he shall not receive wages for full normal working day—
(i) if his failure to work is caused by his unwillingness to work and not by omission of the
employer to provide him with work, and
(ii) such other cases and circumstances as may be prescribed.

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