Hopes Brighten For Wage Board For Newspersons

 Dinesh Chandra

THE parliamentary standing committee on labour has provided a fillip to the newspaper employees’ demand for the constitution of a wage board for long overdue revision of wages.

The previous National Democratic Alliance government had not responded to the innumerable representations in this regard from various associations and federations of newspaper and news agency workers. Its labour minister Dr Sahib Singh Verma, in fact, had reportedly rejected the demand.

The standing committee has now thrown the ball in the court of the United Progressive Alliance government. The government has now to report to the committee what is its stand on the issue. The committee in its report, submitted to parliament recently, has directed the government “to consider the demands of the employees’ unions for constituting a wage board.”

The delay in the formation of the wage board in fact stems from the recommendations of the Second National Labour Commission. The commission, headed by Ravindra Verma, had said that “there is no need for any wage board, statutory or otherwise, for fixing wage rates for workers in any industry.”

The commission, while making the recommendation, was oblivious of the fact that it was in view of the peculiar character of the newspaper industry that the Working Journalists and Other Newspaper Employees (Conditions of Service and Miscellaneous Provisions Act) provided for the constitution of a wage board for periodical revision of wages of the employees in the industry, both journalists as well as non-journalists.

The newspaper baron’s lobby got active after the commission submitted its report.  Having forced majority of the journalists out of the purview of the wage board through contract employment, they wanted to remove it altogether from the statute book. The committee’s recommendation has, however, thwarted the move for the time being.

Various organisations of journalists have been agitating for wage revision as the last Manisana wage board was constituted a decade ago. Whereas in other industries, wages of the employees have been revised twice, in some cases even thrice, the wages in the newspaper industry have been stagnating.

Highlighting the plight of journalists, the Delhi Union of Journalists (DUJ), which has been carrying on a relentless campaign for wage board since its general body meeting in September 2001, has in a memorandum to the union council of ministers and members of parliament said that “whereas in all other industries, wages are generally revised after every five years, a chaotic situation prevails in the newspaper industry with journalists waiting for more than 10 years at an average to get their mere pittance raised.”

The memorandum further stated that “despite statutory responsibility under the Working Journalists Act to constitute a wage board periodically, the governments of the day, irrespective of party composition, have been shying away from it.

“Meanwhile, the stagnating wages have made it difficult for journalists to make both ends meet. It is an irony that journalists are starving while newspaper barons are multiplying their profits as is reflected in their annual reports.”

The memorandum also focuses on the problem of employment of journalists on contract, “which the newspaper proprietors are using to deny newsmen their due,” adding that  “using this device, the proprietors pay journalists, barring a select few, a fraction of what they legitimately deserve,” and demanding abolition of employment of newspersons on contract and their absorption as regular staffers.

The DUJ also wants amendment to the Working Journalists Act to include newspersons in the electronic media so that statutory benefits are available to them also. However, the amendment should not delay the constitution of a wage board, as the amendments can take retrospective effect, it says. (INN)