The Calcutta High Court recently observed that if the employer is found to be at fault, there is no way that the ‘No Work No Pay’ principle can be applied to deny an employee what is rightfully his.
The case involved a retired employee of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) who was working as a guard. The guard was denied arrears based on the No Work No Pay principle.
The guard was appointed 20 March 20, 1972 and was promoted to the post of security assistant in grade – III in 1998. Another promotion put him grade – II in 2007. He was not promoted again and eventually retired in February, 2010.
The guard was supposed to be promoted to grade I in June of 2001 and then to assistant sergeant in 2006. However, due to a mistake in the records at KMC, the guard’s year of joining was stated as 1981 instead of 1972. Merely 10 days before he was to retire, he was told that he would be given notional fixation of pay minus any arrear benefits. However, the guard sought all arrear benefits.
The Court realized that the guard had requested that his date of joining be corrected in the KMC records in October of 2005. However, KMC had not taken any action nor was he given any promotion until he retired in 2010.
The bench comprising Justice Ajay Kumar Gupta that the ‘No Work No Pay’ principle cannot be applied universally and definitely not when the mistake is made by the employer. It is not the employee’s fault that he could discharge his duties in a higher post for five years because KMC did not promote him as per the standard process.
Observing that the fault lay with KMC, the Calcutta High Court ruled in favour of the retired employee ordering KMC to clear all salary arrears. KMC was told to pay the retired employee all the arrears in terms of differences of salary of his promotional posts on and from October, 2005, till his retirement in 2010. As per Millennium Post, the court ordered KMC to re-fix the employee’s financial benefits in line with the set rules.
