Total days in a month for daily waged workmen (30 days or 26 days)

Make Anonymous #
Hi all,
1. while calculating the wages of daily wages, whether to pay 30 days wages or 26 days in a month in J&K.
2. Section 23 of the J&K Minimum Wages Act provides that One day rest to be given after six days and the wages of such rest day to be paid. It means 30 days wages to paid, whereas in Central rules, total days payable are 26. It is specified that while deriving the Minimum Wages as per the Market Index Price, wages on account of rest day have been taken into consideration and it has been included in daily wage rate. Hence, total days in a month are 26 days.
Please suggest.
Thanks & regards,
Jaisingh Thakur

Dear Jaisingh,
Since the no. Of days in the months of any calendar year is not the same, for the purpose of uniformity in calculation, a month is construed to comprise of 30 days only. It is purely a matter of approximation. As per any law relating to employment, 6 days consecutive work has to be followed by Holiday on the 7th day. Therefore, when minimum wages are fixed by the appropriate Government at daily rate, the wages for the day of weekly holiday is also included. That's why we find the explanatory note in the G.O that to arrive at the daily rate, the monthly wages should be divided by 26 and to arrive at the monthly rate, the Daily wages should be multiplied by 30.
IF a daily wager works consecutively beyond 26 days in the same month it means that he works by proportionately losing his holidays and therefore his daily wage rate has to be multiplied by the actual number of days he worked.