In EPF, Is it legally correct for the same member to have two different active establishments?

In EPF, is it legally correct for the same member to have two different active establishments? For example, she is working in two different establishments at the same time, and PF subscriptions are credited from two establishments in the same month. Will there be any contradictions.

No single person can be employed at two places at the same time. If discovered by the department, both accounts may get locked.

A person can be employed part-time in multiple establishments and could also be employed in different establishments at different times of the month. Under the previous process, they would have two different accounts. However, now everyone is required to follow the UAN. Therefore, only one account will exist, and both employers can deposit the contributions into the same UAN.

Experiencing Dual PF Numbers and ESI Challenges

It is possible. Practically, I experienced it; one of my employees is working at "Domino's Pizza" as a part-timer in the evening hours. I had the same doubt and confirmed with PF officials directly that it is not a problem to have two active PF numbers at the same time.

As @saswata rightly said, he/she can link both accounts in the same UAN.

However, the real problem occurred with ESI. He had worked at "Domino's" before joining my company (from his college days). They had paid ESI, and he was registered with them, being a regular user of ESI facilities. When he joined us, I created a new ESI number. During an ESI camp in my office a few months later, his identity was duplicated, and that's when I discovered his part-time employment. The PF issue was resolved as mentioned earlier, but the ESI issue remained unresolved. Due to the duplication problem, he was unable to use both ESI numbers. Despite our efforts to resolve the issue, it was futile. The climax was when he resigned from my company and joined Domino's as a full-time employee due to this reason.

Regards

Dual Employment and EPF Regulations

Though the EPF person has stated that it is not permitted in EPS rules to have dual employment, in case of any accident, the EDLI claim would be in jeopardy. Also, the EPS section allows only one pension per employee. If anybody is maintaining two accounts in the same UAN, then either the date of leaving or the date of joining is missing.

When the Aadhaar is uploaded in KYC, the real fact will apply to both employers as well as the employee. Facing a couple of such cases, it seems that the employee has to forget one of the EPS accounts for the overlapping period.

EPS Withdrawal and Dual Employment Concerns

It won't be a problem for EPS withdrawal when we apply one by one. However, I also agree with the point made by @USsharma regarding pension claims and EDLI. I believe EDLI and EPS are calculated based on the number of years, so they won't duplicate. However, both are definitely based on the last drawn basic salary, which may duplicate. In the worst-case scenario, the PF department can consider the higher wage of any one during pension calculation.

Dual employment is a very common problem nowadays. We can't advise anybody not to work like that. The government should come up with a solution to address this issue.

Understanding EDLI and Its Implications

EDLI is insurance that covers the PF-contributing member up to six lakhs.

In the past year, one member suffered a fatal injury and was unable to get his claim due to this issue. He was a member of the present company for eight years, but due to some greed or something lucrative, he joined another company 4-5 months ago without the knowledge of his current employer. Therefore, the current employer is unaware of these facts.

Although the current employer has done everything possible to help, and the claim was passed under ESIC, the EPFO claim of EDLI got into jeopardy. According to their language, the member does not exist in the present company but joined the new company, as per Form 11 electronically submitted by the new establishment (remember the language in Form 11 mentioned). So, the new company is his present employer, and the six-month barricade is not allowing the EDLI process.

The process is still ongoing, and unless it takes shape, we have asked the employee nominee not to file the withdrawal; otherwise, the EPS claim may get blocked.

If the employment is in factories, it is not legal as double employment is prohibited under the Factories Act.

Understanding Legal Rights for Multiple Jobs

Legally speaking, if we read Article 19 along with Article 21 of our constitution, we will see that a person, being a citizen of India, can do as many jobs as they can. It is a fundamental right, and it is also covered under the UN Charter for basic human rights. Therefore, no government department can question this action unless it violates public interest. Individuals are allowed to work in as many organizations as possible.

For more information, please visit http://www.shramsamadhan.com/.

Srikant,

The concept of double employment is to have a worker work two shifts in two or more factories at the same time. There is no restriction on having two sets of part-time employment.

In my very short experience, I have just come across a strange situation very recently. One of our employees, who has been working with us for the past 1.5 years, joined another company in March 2017 and worked there for 7 days without our knowledge. That company opened a new UAN for him and credited his EPF deduction for those 7 days, after which he left.

For us, this employee has been consistently working with us for the last 1.5 years, and we had provided him with an Aadhaar-linked KYC compliant UAN number. We credited ECR for him every month. The situation became peculiar when we discovered that he had two UANs, both linked to his Aadhaar. EPFO detected that one Aadhaar had two UANs.

Initially, we presumed that EPFO would consider the second company as his current organization because his date of joining in that company was later than his date of joining in our company. Additionally, we believed that we would no longer be able to use this UAN as we would be delinked, and that company would remain his current employer.

However, the opposite occurred. EPFO informed us that since the latest ECR (June ECR) was uploaded from our organization, they would consider our organization as his current company. In his UAN, both companies are listed: our company A with a joining date of February 2016, and Company B with a joining date of March 2017, but our company has become the present employer.

Could someone please explain why this has happened?