"Indian Garment Workers Protest ‘Prolonged Delay’ in New Minimum Wage", February 14 2024

...Members of the Garment and Fashion Workers’ Union (GAFWU) rallied outside the labor commissioner’s office in Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu, on Monday to express their anger against what they say is a “prolonged delay” in the announcement of a new floor wage.

“Workers at the bottom end of the pyramid are being pushed to the wall while employers walk away with profits and governments just look the other way,” said Gautam Mody, convener of Unions United, the industrial federation that counts GAFWU as a member, as well as a member of IndustriALL Global Union’s executive committee ...

According to the Minimum Wages Act, governments in India are required to increase the minimum wage every five years. The last time Tamil Nadu did this, however, was in 2014. For the past decade, the monthly pay for garment workers has stalled between 9,875 Indian rupees ($119) and 10,514 rupees ($127), in part due to several Supreme Court lawsuits by hundreds of manufacturers who claimed that they were unable to fulfill the new wages.

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