ABSTRACT
From Mumbai, Suraj and his group told us that they had been made to sign blank papers in lieu of half the wages for March. Like wages, jobs have been suspended everywhere in informal labour markets. At one branch of a well-known hotel chain, the staff was made to sign pre-drafted resignation letters as soon as the lockdown was announced. Wage denial, salary forfeitures, forced retrenchments, and bonded work are deeply normalised in India's informal economy. The amount of lost wages and jobs is sufficient to establish special status fast-track wage and employment mediation cells and courts in all major cities and industrial clusters. A national floor minimum wage must be declared under the Labour Code on Wages, based on the recommendations of the Anoop Satpathy-led expert committee, which proposed Rs 375 per day.
