iry management has been given time till December 15 to pay the arrears/i>In a decision that will come as a relief to nearly 500 manual workers of the Palanpur-based Banas Dairy, a division bench of the Gujarat High Court has asked the dairy in an interim order that manual workers be paid an increased salary with effect from July 2008.In the order issued on November 25, a bench of justices Mohit Shah and Harsha Devani said that workers whose basic salary is less than Rs 250 per month be paid Rs 800. The new wage for workers whose basic salary is more than Rs 250 per month has been fixed at Rs 1,100 per month. The Banas Dairy management has been given time till December 15 to pay the arrears.The high court’s order comes while hearing a petition filed before it by the dairy from an interim order of the Industrial Tribunal, Ahmedabad, in September this year. In the interim order, the Tribunal had directed that manual workers be given an increased salary of Rs 1,100 per month payable with arrears due from April, 2007.The case demanding higher wages for manual workers was filed before the Industrial Tribunal by Banas Kamdar Union (BKU), a trade union that represents close to 500 blue collar workers of the union. After the tribunal’s interim order, the Banas Dairy increased the wages of employees like clerks and supervisors by more than Rs 3,000 per month, but refused to do so for shopfloor workers. The high court has also directed the Industrial Tribunal to dispose the wage revision matter by December 31, 2009.
