Minimum wage for help: Rs4,500

You may soon have to pay your domestic help a minimum wage to the tune of Rs3,500-4,500 per month, if a new policy announced by minister of state for Labor Rajendra Gavit is implemented.

Addressing a rally of domestic workers at the Congress Bhavan in Pune, Gavit announced the policy to fix minimum salaries for domestic workers. However he didn’t specify how the salaries would be decided, or if the policy incorporates fixed salaries for domestic workers, how much the state’s share will be.

Sunil Shinde, president of the monitoring committee for the UPA government’s flagship programmes and director of the Maharashtra State Domestic Workers’ Welfare Board, told DNA that even though the minister has announced the minimum salaries policy, the details were yet to be decided. He said they were still deliberating whether salaries could be provided on an hourly basis to domestic workers. It is difficult to decide minimum wages for domestic workers as the extent of their work might differ in different homes, the calculation could be done on the basis of clock hours, he said.