Report of the Royal Commission on Labour in India

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1850495947

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-233603

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Report of the Royal Commission on Labour in India

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: His Majesty's Stationery Off.

Year of publication:: 1931

Scope:: xviii, 580 S.; graph. Darst., Kt.

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter XXI. - Wages on planatations

Collection:: Economics Books

169 CHAPTER XXI, season to season, and depends on the nature of the soil and other factors which are not constant within a district, varying even within a single garden, and that the output of the worker also varies according to in- dividual skill and diligence. It has been already stated that low earnings do not necessarily denote unsatisfactory conditions, nor do high earnings always mean that conditions are good. But the objection seems to us to be based on an imperfect understanding of the operation of rate-fixing machinery. In Assam, as elsewhere in India, there is a tendency to assume that statutory wage rates must result in a fixed sum paid to each worker at the end of a month or some other period, irrespective of his task or output during that period. This is, in essence, the system in Ceylon, and when statutory minimum wages were in force for contract labourers on the Assam plantations, the wage prescribed took the form of so many rupees a month. We are agreed that such a system is not capable of general application in Assam. Any system of statutory wage rates, if it is to work equitably, must take ac- count of the fact that the labourer is often a part-time worker, and that in many gardens it is impracticable, even if it were wise, to insist en every worker doing a full day’s work. Piece Rates and Time Rates. Those who recognised that the fixing of statutory wage rates did not necessarily imply a fixed monthly wage, irrespective of capacity and output, appeared to be influenced by the belief that it would be necessary to prescribe in the wage ordinance the exact amount to be paid in the case of piece or task workers for different kinds of work such as hoeing, pruning, plucking, etc. The laying down of specific piece rates would no more be possible in Assam than it has been in Ceylon, and indeed no more desirable. Agreeing, therefore, that, so far as this system is concerned, the objections are valid, we go on to indicate what appears to us to be a system which is not open to these objections and which we believe to be the most suitable, if not the only practicable, system for Assam. In the case of workers paid on a time rate basis, this would involve the determination by the wage- fixing body of basic rates for male, female and child workers. In the case of those employed on piece or task rates, who form the vast majority in this industry, the employers themselves would fix the rate for the task, after determining its capacity to yield a worker of ordinary skill and diligence at least the amount determined by the wage-fixing body as the minimum earning for the given unit of time in the case of the worker employed by the piece or task. In other words, such a worker, as opposed to the slow or inexperienced worker, should be assured a minimum amount for the performance of a given task. The fixing of only one basic rate for children would be made possible if, as we recom- mend elsewhere, the starting age for child workers was restricted to 10 years. The existence of the rate would act as an additional check to the employment of underage children, who would clearly be unable to earn such a rate. It would be for the wage-fixing body to determine the age

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