Offences and Penalties

A small manufacturer in Taloja delays a month’s wages for his staff, and again the next year. Will he go to jail? Will a magistrate fine him, or will an officer simply send him a letter first? Who can even complain? The Code on Wages builds a ladder of consequences: fines first, a chance to correct the mistake, imprisonment only for repeat offenders, and a way to buy peace by compounding the offence.

In two minutes

Under Chapter VIII of the Code on Wages, 2019 an employer who underpays faces a fine up to ₹50,000, repeat underpayment within five years can bring up to three months’ imprisonment or a fine up to ₹1 lakh or both, other contraventions carry a fine up to ₹20,000, and the Inspector-cum-Facilitator must first give a chance to comply before prosecuting a first-time contravention of the lesser kind.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Labour Law and Industrial Relations – I on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.