Kolkata: Increase in working hours does not automatically trigger a right to get double the pay, Calcutta High Court ruled on Monday, rejecting demands of mint workers after their weekly working hours were increased from 37.5 hours to 44 hours.The mint workers had challenged a National Industrial Tribunal order turning down their demand for an additional 19% hike over and above the pay hike under the fifth pay commission.A division bench of Justice Rajasekhar Mantha and Justice Rai Chattopadhyay noted that with an increase in work hours, salary was also increased as per the fifth pay commission. Hence, the workers cannot claim double the pay by calling the extra hours ‘overtime’.The HC stressed that 44 weekly work hours were below the maximum statutory limit of 48 hours in India. The fifth pay commission, the bench said, had specified that working 37 hours and 30 minutes per week were adequate before Independence but not so after the economic surge.“The claim that overtime allowance should be translated into a salary hike for the new normal working hours is an attempt to prevent the employer from increasing the working hours. It also seeks to extract more money from the employer when the latter calls upon the employee to work for hours below the maximum statutory limit,” the HC said.The workers’ counsel had claimed in court the mint workers had been working for 37 hours and 30 minutes per week from “time immemorial,” and this had become a convention. It was also argued that the general managers of three mint offices — Calcutta, Bombay and Andhra Pradesh — had promised that the 19% hike demand, as claimed by the workers, would be “favourably considered” by the finance ministry. The HC held that the “general managers did not have the authority” to make such an announcement.
