During the first week of August 2019, India’s Parliament passed the Code on Wages Bill, 2019. The Bill will enable the federal government to fix minimum statutory wages for millions of workers.
The Bill is the first in the series of four labor codes that the government is working on to rationalize its 44 labor laws and improve the ease of doing business in the country. It seeks to subsume relevant provisions of four previous labor laws — Minimum Wages Act, Payment of Wages Act, Payment of Bonus Act and Equal Remuneration Act. The other three codes will deal with employee health, safety, and social security.
The Code on Wages will regulate wage and bonus payments in all employments and aims at providing equal remuneration to employees performing work of a similar nature in every industry, trade, business, or manufacture. It also aims to transform old and obsolete labor laws, (some of which were enacted in the pre-Independence era and were meant primarily for factories and industrial establishments) into a more accountable and transparent law, and will apply to employees in the organized and unorganized sectors.
The federal government will continue making wage-related decisions for employment in sectors such as the railways, mines, oil fields, and state-owned undertakings. The State Governments will make decisions for all other employments including for private sector establishments.
The rules under the Code on Wages are yet to be released for public review.
Last updated: December 26th, 2025
