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“Denial of minimum wages to Community Health Volunteers is clearly against the legislative objective of the Minimum Wages Act”
In a significant ruling, the Bombay High Court has held that Community Health Volunteers (CHV) engaged by the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) for over 38 years are ’employees’ for the limited purpose of payment of minimum wages under the Minimum Wages Act, 1948, even though they are branded as ‘volunteers’ and denied other service benefits. Hence, mere branding as ‘volunteers’ or payment styled as ‘honorarium’ cannot defeat the statutory mandate.
The Court said that principle of “equal pay for equal work” require that Governments and their instrumentalities pay dignified wages to persons hired for reward. Financial burden alone cannot justify denial of minimum wages. However, the Court cautioned that grant of minimum wages does not entitle CHVs to absorption, regularization, increments, promotions, leave wages, or pension in municipal service.
A Single Judge Bench of Justice Sandeep V. Marne observed that the core issue was the entitlement of CHVs to receive minimum wages under the Minimum Wages Act,1948, and not their absorption in municipal service. The mere pendency of the appeals before the Supreme Court on the question of CHVs’ status as ‘workman’ would not ipso facto bar the Authority from adjudicating the minimum wages claim, since the demand for absorption in service is conceptually distinct from the demand for payment of dignified wages. The Court held that even a person not in regular employment can raise a demand for minimum wages.
The Court undertook a comparative analysis of the definition of ‘workman’ under Section 2(s) of the ID Act and ’employee’ under Section 2(i) of the Minimum Wages Act. It noted that the definition of ’employee’ under the Minimum Wages Act is substantially wider, encompassing any person employed for hire or reward to do any work, skilled or unskilled, manual or clerical, in scheduled employment. The Court clarified that the term ’employed’ under Section 2(i) is not to be confused with ‘appointment’ and must be read with ‘for hire or reward’. Every person paid remuneration for services rendered would thus be covered by the expression ’employee’, regardless of whether they are permanent, temporary, casual, ad hoc, work-charged, contractual, or badli. Whether CHVs answer the description of ‘workman’ under the ID Act is irrelevant for determining their entitlement to minimum wages.
The Court further observed that merely branding the wages paid to CHVs as ‘honorarium’ cannot deny them the status of ’employees’ under the Minimum Wages Act, since Section 2(h) defines ‘wages’ to include all remuneration capable of being expressed in terms of money payable in respect of employment. If the nomenclature of reward is allowed to become the decisive factor, it would become easy for employers to escape statutory liability by simply calling wages as honorarium.
The Court rejected MCGM’s contention that CHVs were genuine volunteers. The record established that CHVs have worked for MCGM for over 38 long years, are supervised by Health Post doctors and nurses, have their muster rolls maintained, report for duty, work for about 5 hours daily, obey orders, and receive fixed remuneration every month. Many have continued till they crossed the age of retirement. The Court held that such persons are not volunteers in the true sense — volunteers ordinarily work without being paid or forced, while the CHVs discharge vital duties for reward.
The Court placed significant reliance on the Supreme Court’s judgment in State of Punjab vs. Jagjit Singh [(2017) 1 SCC 148], which laid down the principle that once it is established that temporary or casual employees perform the same nature of duties as regular employees, Governments and instrumentalities are mandatorily required to pay wages at the minimum of the pay scales payable to regular employees. This principle applies to daily-wage, ad hoc, contractual, and similarly situated employees. The Court also referred to Article 7 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 1966, and reaffirmed that the principle of “equal pay for equal work” is a clear and unambiguous right vested in every employee, whether engaged on regular or temporary basis.
The Court expressed a notable inconsistency in MCGM’s position, that while MCGM insists on minimum wage payments in all its tenders to contractors (as a principal employer under Section 21 of the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970), it denies the same to CHVs who are directly paid by MCGM. The Court found this position unfathomable.
Briefly, the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) filed a batch of petitions challenging a common judgment passed by the Authority under the Minimum Wages Act, 1948 and the Assistant Commissioner of Labour, Mumbai City. The said order had allowed applications preferred by Community Health Volunteers (CHVs) and their unions, directing MCGM to pay the difference between the minimum wages prescribed under a Government Notification dated 24 February 2015 and the honorarium actually paid to the CHVs. The Petitioners were aggrieved that they had been held liable to pay quantified minimum wage differentials to these CHVs.
The dispute traces its origin to the year 1988, when MCGM implemented ‘India Population Project V’ with financial assistance from the World Bank. The project envisaged the establishment of 176 ‘Health Posts’, including 56 Family Welfare Centres across Mumbai, to provide preventive and curative health services in slum areas such as family planning, maternal and child healthcare, vaccination, and disease control programmes like pulse polio, AIDS control, leprosy eradication, tuberculosis control, and malaria eradication. After World Bank funding ceased on 31 March 1996, MCGM assured continuity of the project and began funding it from its own budget. Each Health Post was manned by a Medical Officer, a Public Health Nurse, 3 to 5 Auxiliary Nurses, 3 to 5 Multipurpose Workers, and about 25 Part-time Woman Health Workers, besides a Centre Attendant.
To implement these schemes, MCGM started hiring local women in the community as part-time Community Health Volunteers (CHVs). These CHVs were paid a fixed honorarium based on the number of hours worked daily, with some working for 3 hours, some for 4 hours, and the Respondents claiming to have worked for 5 hours every day. The number of CHVs engaged by MCGM was recorded as approximately 3,400 by the Bombay High Court in its order dated 4 January 2017, and is now around 3,000.
The Mahapalika Aarogya-Seva Karmachari Sanghatana (Union) raised a demand for absorption of CHVs as regular employees, leading to Reference (IT) No.39 of 2000 before the Industrial Tribunal, Mumbai. The Tribunal framed a preliminary issue on the status of CHVs as ‘workman’ under Section 2(s) of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 (ID Act). By Part-I Award dated 2 March 2002, the Industrial Tribunal held that CHVs were ‘workman’ under the ID Act. However, by final Award dated 13 January 2004, the Tribunal rejected the demand for absorption in municipal service but directed MCGM to increase the honorarium by Rs.150 per month, making CHVs entitled to Rs.900 per month w.e.f. 13 January 2004, along with uniformity in working hours.
