PTI employee wins Majithia case

In the first Award (concerning the Majithia Wage Board Award ) to be passed  by the Labour Courts at Mumbai, Shri F M Pathan, Judge, 4th Labour Court , has awarded Rs 6,48,950/- (Rs Six Lakhs Forty Eight Thousand Nine Hundred and Fifty Only) to A B Desai of Press Trust of India (PTI).

Desai had filed an application u/s 17 of The Working Journalists and Other Newspaper Employees (Conditions of Service) and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1955 claiming that he had been denied two pay scale up-gradations (promotions) under Clause 19 (f) of the Majithia Wage Board Award (MWBA) for news agencies, thereby entitling him to receive a difference of Rs 6,48,950/- (Rs Six Lakhs Forty Eight Thousand Nine Hundred and Fifty Only).

The PTI management argued that up-gradations (promotions) were not automatic but were linked to a satisfactory performance of service during the stipulated period. According to PTI, Desai’s service was unsatisfactory.

The PTI management also contented that promotions could only be prospective and not retrospective and, therefore, Clause 19 (f) of the MBWA came into play only after the date of enforcement, i.e. 11/11/2011.

Rejecting the arguments of the PTI, the court held that no appraisal report had been filed by the company and that the contention of the Company were not supported by any documentary material.

Importantly, the court also concluded that Clause 19 (f) envisaged that the entire period of service as on 11.11.2011 had to be taken into consideration.

Furthermore, the court held that non-issuance of any memo or show cause or warning or any adverse remark was sufficient to deduce that service is satisfactory. As Desai had not received any memo or show cause or warning or any adverse remark, his service could not be held below any satisfactory benchmark.

The court also rejected PTI’s argument that the work being done by Desai had become obsolete and therefore he was not entitled to any up-gradation / promotions and observed that though the work had become obsolete, the First Party kept the Second Party in employment till his superannuation (on 30/11/2016) and extended all other service conditions.

In a well-reasoned and clearly-worded order, the court concluded that Desai was entitled to two promotions - the first one on 11/11/2011 and the second on 02/02/2015. The court, therefore, held that Desai be paid a sum of Rs 6,48,950/- (Rs Six Lakhs Forty Eight Thousand Nine Hundred and Fifty Only) as claimed.

वर्किंग जर्नलिस्ट एक्ट खत्म करने जा रही मोदी सरकार, दर्ज कराएं अपना विरोध

वेजबोर्ड बचाने के लिए सभी पत्रकार-गैर पत्रकार संगठन एकजुट होकर दर्ज कराएं आपत्ति 

सभी पत्रकार-गैर पत्रकार एवं अखबार कर्मचारियों के संगठनों से सादर अनुरोध है कि वे वर्किंग जर्नलिस्ट एक्ट एण्ड मिसलिनियस प्रोविजन एक्ट-1955 को “द इंडस्ट्रियल रिलेशन केड-2019”, “द कोड ऑफ सोशल सिक्योरिटी 2019″ और ”वेज कोड-2019” में शामिल किए जाने का विरोध करें।

लोकसभा सचिवालय द्वारा गठित “डिपार्टमेंटली रिलेटड स्टैंडिंग कमेटी ऑन लेबर” के यहां सभी संगठन अपने-अपने स्तर पर नियमानुसार आपत्ति दर्ज करवाकर वर्किंग जर्नलिस्ट एक्ट बचाने का कष्ट करें।
हालांकि कुछ साथी भर्त्रूहरि मेहताब (सांसद, कमेटी अध्यक्ष) के पास अपना विरोध दर्ज करवा चुके हैं, लेकिन अब लोकसभा सचिवालय ने अखबारों में विज्ञापन देकर एक बार पुन: सुझाव मांगे हैं। ऐसे में पत्रकार संगठन अपनी आपत्ति अवश्य दर्ज कराएं अन्यथा मोदी सरकार पत्रकारों और गैर पत्रकारों के लिए वेज बोर्ड समाप्त करने का प्रावधान कर चुकी है। इसे रोकने के लिए सभी को एकजुट होना चाहिए।

-विजय शर्मा
vijaysharmaht@gmail.com

मजीठिया पर बड़ी खबर: भास्‍कर को झटका, अदालत ने चार कर्मियों के ट्रांसफर और टर्मिनेशन को गलत ठहराया, दिए निुक्ति के आदेश

भीलवाड़ा। राजस्‍थान की भीलवाड़ा लेबर कोर्ट ने बृहस्‍पतिवार को मजीठिया वेजबोर्ड आयोग की मांग करने वाले चार साथियों को भास्कर प्रबंधन द्वारा 2015 में किए गए ट्रांसफर एवं टर्मिनेशन को गलत माना है!
न्यायाधीश अजीत कुमार हिंगड़ ने लंबी बहस और सबूतों के आधार वर्ष इन चार कर्मचारियों को 2015 से रेगुलर नौकरी मानते हुए इनकी बहाली के आदेश एि।
इन चार कर्मचारियों में  दैनिक भास्कर भीलवाड़ा के डिप्टी न्यूज एडिटर ललित ओझा, चीफ सब एडिटर प्रदीप ब्यास, सब एडिटर रणजीत राजपूत और डीटीपी इंचार्ज ललित विजयवर्गीय शामिल है।
कर्मचारियों की तरफ से भारतीय मजदूर संघ  के प्रदेश उपाध्यक्ष प्रभाष चौधरी ने पैरवी की।
गौरतलब है कि लेबर कोर्ट ने इससे पहले 27 दिसंबर 2019 को मजीठिया वेजबोर्ड आयोग लड़ाई लड़ रहे भीलवाड़ा के 13 कर्मचारियों को दो करोड़ की रिकवरी के आदेश दिए थे।

#MajithiaWageBoardsSalary, MajithiaWageBoardsSalary, Majithia Wage Boards Salary

Send List of National Councilors and Delegates to IFWJ Headquarters

To

All Presidents and General Secretaries of the state units, Working Committee Members and Office Bearers of the IFWJ,



Dear Comrade,

Greetings of the New Year!

We are glad to inform that Shri B.V. Mallikarjunaiah has again been elected the President of the Indian Federation of Working Journalists (IFWJ). The announcement of his unanimous election was made on 27th of December 2019 by the Central Returning Officer (CRO) Shankar Dutt Sharma. The result of his election has been widely reported in newspapers and web portals. The CRO Sharma was ably assisted by the ACRO Shri T.B. Singh in the discharge of his onerous responsibilities. The new tenure of B.V. Mallikarjunaiah will start from the new delegate session, which will be held in the new future in consultation with other state units. It will be attended by the National Councilors and the Delegates of all the state units.

List of National Councilors and Delegates
It is, therefore, requested that all state units should send the list of the National Councilors and Delegates to the IFWJ Headquarters on email ‘ifwj.ifwj@gmail.com’ at the earliest possible but not later than 25th of January 2020. It is pertinent to mention here that only the National Councilors will be qualified to file the nomination papers for the election to Working Committee including for the posts of the other office-bearers. In the meantime, the last meeting of the outgoing Working Committee will be held before the Delegate Session some times before 10th of February 2020. We have got the invitation from many state units but the final decision about the date and venue will be taken in consultation with the host state unit.

Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code
The Government of India has decided to amalgamate 14 labour laws into four code bills. One of it, the Wages Code Bill, has already been passed by both Houses of Parliament in August 2019. However, as soon as we came to know about the subsuming of the Working Journalists Act and Fixation of Wages of Journalists Act with the ‘Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code’, we swung into action and sought time from the Union Labour Minister Mr Santosh Gangwar. We met him twice once; at his residence which comprised the IFWJ Vice President Hemant Tiwari, Secretary Siddharth Kalhans, Treasurer Rinku Yadav, National Councilor Ravindra Mishra, UPWJU President Bhaskar Dube among others. The Union Labour Minister assured us in our first meeting itself that the interests of the media employees would be fully taken care of. The IFWJ also submitted a memorandum to him underlining the need of comprehensively amending the Working Journalists Act, which has become thoroughly inadequate after the explosion of the audiovisual and digital media.

The second time we met him in his office in a delegation of all the important media organisations of the country, it included the representatives from Confederation of Newspapers and News Agencies Employees Federation, Indian Federation of Working Journalists, All India Newspaper Employees Federation, Indian Journalists Union, National Union of Journalists (I), PTI Employees Union and Indian Express Newspapers Employees Union. A joint memorandum was submitted to the Minister, who emphatically promised that there would be no compromise with the interests and welfares of the media employees. Earlier in a meeting at Chennai of all the media employees unions had decided to hold a massive protest rally at Jantar Mantar on 10th of October 2019. Pursuant to that, we organised a huge rally at Jantar Mantar on the said date. It was the biggest protest rally of the media persons after 2001.

We are happy to state that our meetings and memoranda to the Minister and protest demonstration yielded the result. otherwise, the government would have passed this Bill also in the same surreptitious manner as the Wages Code Bill was passed without even a whimper of protest even from the All India Trade Union organisations like; BMS, HMS, AITUC, INTUC and CITU etc. It was only due to our concerted efforts that the Government referred our memorandum to the Parliamentary Committee on Labour headed by Bhartruhari Mahtab. The Committee thereafter called us to hear our views on 19th December 2019 in the Annexe of the Parliament. The Committee members and the Chairman assured us to recommend our submissions to the Government not to take amalgamate of the Working Journalists Act with other Acts, which have no commonality with it.

The IFWJ also submitted a separate memorandum of nearly ten pages to the Parliamentary Committee on Labour pointing out the need for the retention of the Working Journalists Act and also for comprehensively amending it so as the benefits of the Working Journalists Act are extended to employees working for the electronic medium or the web portals.

IFWJ has also planned to have a wide discussion on this issue with other trade union bodies of media so that; a strategy could be prepared for safeguarding the Working Journalists Act.

The Working Journalist
Friends! The year 2020 has heralded with a new resolution of the IFWJ to regularly being out ‘The Working Journalist’ every month. Therefore, all state units are requested to send the advertisements, articles, photographs of the activities of their state units.

IFWJ Office
We have to have a new and state-of-the-art office as the lease for the old office has expired. The new office will be all the more necessary because the existing office does not have much space. Our shifting to the new office will depend upon the generous monetary contributions from states. As you all know that the IFWJ is the oldest organisation of the journalists and yet it could not get its own permanent office place because of the insatiable greed of a person, who shamelessly cornered all the recourses for his personal purposes rather than for strengthening the organisation. Thankfully, he has been ousted from the IFWJ. Hopefully, 2020 would be a turning point in the history of the IFWJ. We propose to have an Office Committee for the IFWJ consisting of the members from different states.

Quota-money
We have entered into the new decadal year. So, it is requested of all the state units to send their quota money along with the new list of the members. Let this New Year bring all joys and achievements to our members.


Parmanand Pandey
Secretary-General, IFWJ

B.V. Mallikarjunaiah Re-elected as the President of the Indian Federation of Working Journalists

New Delhi, December 27; Renowned Kannada journalist B.V. Mallikarjunaiah has the unanimously elected as the President of the Indian Federation of Working Journalists (IFWJ) for the second consecutive term. His election has been announced today by the Central Returning Officer (CRO) Shankar Dutt Sharma. B.V. Mallikarjunaiah’s name has been proposed and seconded by more than 500 members from ten states. Presently, 27 state units are affiliated to the IFWJ (out of it 23 units are registered with the Registrar of Trade Unions of their respective states).  The IFWJ Working Committee in its meeting held at Raipur on 18th August had decided that the candidature of the contestant should be proposed and seconded by at least 50 members from two states.

Mallikarjunaiah has worked in senior positions in many news organisations. His journalistic experience spans more than five decades. He worked for more than forty years for the Kannada Prabha, a prestigious newspaper of Karnataka. In the year 2009, he was sought by many media organisations to launch or refurbish the newspapers or news channels. However, he preferred to be associated with the Suvarna News, an electronic channel as its News Programmer. For some time, he worked in a senior position with Udayavani, another prestigious newspaper of Bangalore. Although, he has been mainly with print journalism yet his understanding of other modes of journalism like that of the electronic is quite significant. Presently, he is associated with Kannada Prabha in his second stint in the capacity of the Editor, Co-ordination and Special Projects of the newspaper.

Widely travelled in India and abroad Mallikarjunaiah is known for his fierce trade unionism, impeccable integrity and honesty. He is a God-fearing person. He loves reading, writing and travelling. He holds Post-Graduation in Kannada Language and Literature. 

Journalists and non-journalists hold him in high esteem and turn towards him for his advice and guidance, which he offers without any demur. A good Samaritan, that he is, Mallikarjunaiah helps anybody and everybody across all spectrum of the society.  Mallikarjunaiah has also been a member of the Central Press Accreditation Committee (CPAC). He is also the Patron of the Confederation of Asian Journalists Union (CAJU). His first term as the President of the IFWJ has been quite magnificent and glorious in the consolidation of the organisation throughout the country and hopefully, his second term will help the IFWJ to grow from strength to strength so that it can work with more vigour for the welfare of journalists. He has had held the post of the President the Karnataka

Union of Working Journalists for three terms and the credit goes to him for organising a number of successful meetings and conferences of the IFWJ. He was the member Karnataka State Media Academy, TSR Award Selection Committee, P Ramaih Small and Medium Newspapers Advisory Committee, Central Press Accreditation Committee, Railways Consumers Advisory Committee and the Senate member of Bangalore University. It is because of his efforts as the Director of the Journalists Housing Co-operative Society that scores of journalists got residential plots in Bangalore and they are now the proud owners of their houses. Mallikarjunaiah has won many awards from different bodies and organisations.

However, the biggest commendation had come to him from the late S.V. Jayasheela Rao, an iconic journalist, who described ‘Mallikarjunaiah, as a class apart. He is an affable, well behaved, and always ready to help others but above all, he is decent to the core. He has always used journalism as a means to serve society and not to suck it for his personal benefits. These qualities are enough to make him a loveable a tall in the eyes of others.’ The new term of Mallikarjunaiah will start from the Delegate Session to be held soon, where the CRO Shri Sharma with the help of ACRO Shri T.B. Singh will conduct the election of other office-bearers.

Parmanand Pandey
Secretary-General: IFWJ

पीएफ चोरी पर लगेगा दस गुना जुर्माना, तीन साल तक हो सकती है जेल

नई दिल्‍ली। कर्मचारियों के भविष्‍य निधि (पीएफ) चोरी पर अब कंपनियों से दस गुना जुर्माना वसूला जाएगा। पहले यह रकम दस हजार रुपये थी, लेकिन अब इसे एक लाख रुपये कर दिया गया है। केंद्र सरकार ने कोड ऑफ सोशल सिक्योरिटीज नाम के एक बिल में यह प्रावधान किया है। सरकार को  कर्मचारी संगठनों से शिकायतें मिल रही थीं कि कई कंपनियां कर्मचारियों के वेतन में से पीएफ का पैसा तो काटती हैं, लेकिन उसे जमा नहीं करातीं। इसके चलते ही उसने इस मामले में सख्ती बरतने का फैसला किया है। इसके तहत अब कंपनियों को कर्मचारियों के पीएफ के बारे में अपनी जानकारी दुरुस्‍त रखनी होगी।
नए प्रावधानों के तहत पीएफ न जमा करने या गलत जानकारी देने वाली कंपनियों के खिलाफ लगने वाले जुर्माने को 10 हजार से बढ़ाकर एक लाख रुपये तक कर दिया गया है। जुर्माने के साथ-साथ ऐसे मामलों में दोषी पाए जाने वाले व्यक्तियों को तीन साल तक की जेल भी हो सकती है।
[साभार हिंदुस्तान]

मजीठिया पर बड़ी खबर: भास्कर के 13 साथियों ने जीता रिकवरी का केस, मिलेंगे...

राजस्थान में दैनिक भास्कर को एक बार फिर झटका लगा है यहां भीलवाड़ा के 13 साथियों के मामले में आज शाम 5 बजे लेबर कोर्ट ने अपना आर्डर सुनाया। आर्डर में सभी कर्मचारियों को मजीठिया का हकदार मानते हुए जज साहब ने एरियर देने का आदेश दिया। यहां कर्मचारियों को बिना ब्याज के भुगतान करने के आदेश दिए गए हैं उक्त 13 साथियों में सबसे ज्यादा 29 लाख रुपए का एरियर और कम से कम 5 लाख का एरियर देने के आर्डर हुए हैं।