Navigating Lockdown Leave: Can Employers Adjust Leave and Pay Post-Lockdown?

Leave Adjustment During Lockdown

Firstly, can leave due to the lockdown period be adjusted with the EL/PL of the employees?

Working on Holidays to Compensate for Lockdown Leaves

Secondly, if management wants to require employees to work on weekly holidays, such as Saturday and Sunday, and on government holidays to compensate for the leaves during the lockdown, is this permissible?

Salary Concerns Post-Lockdown

Thirdly, if the company provided 50% salary to employees during the lockdown period and continues to provide the same amount of salary after reopening, can the employees request their full salary? Please guide me on the legal norms and clauses.

Please help me, sir.

Hi Nanditadas,

Ethical considerations in employment negotiations

1st & 2nd: It is not ethical. However, issues should be discussed and agreed upon mutually with a view to helping both parties.

Guidance from the Supreme Court

3rd: Even the Supreme Court advised employers and employees to negotiate with mutual concern for an amicable settlement. I suggest employees maintain peace and wait for a few more months until the firm's operations regain healthy finances.

Dear Nandita, the prevailing lockdown, whether total or partial, is an extraordinary and unprecedented situation in the history of organized economic activity in the world. Apart from being grim, it is, to some extent, painfully unique in the sense that the legal concessions granted to employers in respect of curtailing employment benefits to their employees in situations beyond their control and capacity have to be kept in abeyance during the worldwide lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since it is more a problem of life rather than that of livelihood, it is imperative that the employers should adopt a humane approach to the consequential employment issues pertaining to the period of lockdown and thereafter as well.

Therefore, my suggestion would be to take collective decisions on such issues with the concurrence of the employees. But ensure that there are no blatant violations of legal provisions nor any contracting out. This is the quintessence of the ratio decidendi of the Supreme Court of India's recent observation.