The Bombay High Court has sought the Government’s response in a PIL challenging illegal, arbitrary, inhumane and unilateral measures to remove or pay cuts of journalist and non-journalist employees of various media houses amid the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown.
Maharashtra Union of Working Journalists and the Nagpur Union of Working Journalists has filed the plea raising grievance over such employees being forcefully terminated, subjected to pay cuts and the coerced to accept changes in their service conditions to become contractual employees.
Conditions of service and offering contractual re-appointments and a major part of the salary has been linked to Performance Linked Pay. With such an arrangement, employers have also evolved their own pay structure, which violates the Working Journalists Act of 1955, the petition states further.
Bench of Justices Sunil B Shukre and Anil S Kilor while addressing the petitionnoted that the petition stated that the media sector was exempted from the lockdown, and further that they had continued to work on the frontlines amid the pandemic.
“It is worth mentioning here that the journalist/ non-journalist employees of such newspaper organisations/ groups are the frontline Corona warriors even during this lockdown period and as working by rising their lives providing services, authentic news to the people at large and they now are facing termination of service for all the wrong reasons. “
- the petition stated.
“For the last nearly a month now, the newspaper organisations/ groups themselves are in the news for all the wrong reasons. And now, not a single day passes when there is now news of sacking print media employees or shutting down of some edition or section of some newspaper or the other”, the petitioners stated.
Apart from violating Articles 14, 16, 19 and 21 of the Constitution, the petitioners contend that such retrenchment and allied measures of employees violate the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 and the Working Journalists Act,1955.
It is also noted that these measures of pay cuts and layoffs run contrary to advisories issued by the Central Government last March.
As such, the petitioners contend that if no binding directive is given to private media houses, “thousands of employees will be vulnerable to losing their jobs/ income, which will lead to an unprecedented economic situations – a situation that the country cannot afford.”
