Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Tuesday approved the setting up of a new wage board to recommend the minimum emoluments and perquisites for working journalists. “Formal orders regarding this will be issued shortly by the labour ministry,” said a statement issued by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).
“Working journalists may be reassured that the prime minister has fulfilled the assurance he had given them when they had called on him last year,” the statement said.
The government had set up previous wage boards in 1956, 1963, 1975, 1985 and 1994. The 4th wage board was constituted in July 1985 and its recommendations came in May 1989, which were accepted by the government in 1990. The latest one was set up in September 1994 under the chairmanship of Justice Raj Kumar Manisana Singh, a retired chief justice of the Guwahati High Court. The government accepted its interim report in September 1996 and issued the necessary notification in April 1995. Another notification, based on the final report, came in December 2000.
Wage boards are constituted under the Working Journalists and other Newspaper Employees (Conditions of Service) and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1955 that regulates the conditions of employment of journalists and employees of news agencies and newspapers.
Justice K Narayana Kurup has been appointed Chairman of the Wage Boards for Working Journalists and Non-journalists. Kurup, a former Judge of Kerala High Court, who has also served as an acting Chief Justice of Madras High Court, will head the two boards.
Former Labour Secretary KM Sahni was appointed as Member Secretary to operationalise the wage boards, which will start functioning with immediate effect for submission of reports within the stipulated period of three years, an official announcement said.
The two boards would have ten members each. Besides the Chairman, the fulltime member secretary, two independent members and and three members representing employers’ organisations would be common to both the Boards.
The remain three members in each board would be from employees’ organisations representing working journalists and non-journalists respectively. A notification on the constitution of the Boards would be issued shortly. The announcement came within hours of Singh approving the constitution of the Boards.
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) welcomed the announcement saying it was recognition of the “key role decent working conditions play in building quality media.” Aidan White, IFJ General Secretary, said, “This announcement is good news for unions who have been demanding decent working conditions, and it is welcome recognition of the key role decent work plays in building media quality.”
The country’s three major journalists groups – the Indian Journalists’ Union, the National Union of Journalists, India and the All India Newspaper Employees Federation – formed a confederation to demand that the government made good on promises to relaunch the country’s wage board system. IFJ had supported the confederation’s efforts to institute the wage board system.
“For years the government has been saying it would tackle a growing media employment crisis,” White said, “as media companies forced employees to accept vulnerable labour conditions with ‘take it or leave it’ contracts and in the process they are denying international labour standards and sending standards of journalism into freefall.”
