Code on Wages – For Beginners

Wages are being paid from the very primitive time of human civilization. The wages are always paid by the person or the party, who is expected to get the benefit of the work being performed to every person performing such work. Thus, wages have always been a part of compensation being paid to the person working for some other person or institution.

From the point of view of Economics, wages are the reward for the source of production called ‘Labor’ and includes salary, allowances, perquisites, and all the other types of payments being made to the persons supplying their labor or physical and/or mental efforts in the production process.

On the other hand, wages are the income for the persons working in the production process and thus, form the base for starting new economic activities. So, wages are a very important aspect for any country and economy at large. This is why governments have a deep interest in regulating wages and wage rates.

In India, attempts to regulate wages have been made since the pre-independence era and the same is going on even to date. The Code on Wages is the most recent step in this direction, which attempts to regulate the computation, payment, and governance of wages.

This course is targeted at explaining to the learners about some important provisions and changes being proposed by the code on wages and on enabling the learners to understand the difference, that the changes being introduced by the code are going to bring in the working of an HR executive while ensuring the statutory compliance. The course also provides some best practices that can be followed to ensure statutory compliance with the code easily, when it is implemented.[SSP1]

By the end of this course, the learners should be able to

• Identify the new definitions and provisions related to the HR operations proposed by the code on wages
• Describe the contents being modified or added to the existing provisions and definitions
• Discover the best practices that need to be followed for smoothening the transition from existing practices to the new practices