What is Remuneration
Remuneration is to recompense by paying an equivalent for a service or a “return” for the services rendered.
Remuneration can be said to be a formal expression of the word “wages” as traditionally understood. Needless to emphasise that the remuneration must be capable of being expressed in terms of money. Otherwise how would one recover it? Therefore, only those returns or recompense for the services rendered can fall in the definition of wages which can be evaluated in terms of money. If not the same cannot fall within the ambit and scope of wages.
There is another feature of the definition which must receive a special attention. It is that the remuneration paid to the workmen must be in respect of the employment or the work done by the workmen.
In Bennett Coleman & Co. (P) Ltd. v/s Punya Priya Das Gupta, 1969 II LLJ 554 the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India held that the car allowance and the benefit of free Telephone were not the remuneration because the same were not restricted to the employment.
Further the same were not fixed after taking into consideration the expenses which the workmen would have ordinarily incurred in connection with his employment or the work done in such employment.
The Supreme Court then observed that though the car allowance and benefits of free telephones were not the “remuneration” yet they fell in. the category of “allowances” and as such “wages” under the Act. This ruling of the apex court also brings out the glaring distinction between “allowances” and “wages” (or remuneration) and the reason as to why the Legislature has chosen to include “allowances” in “wages” while defining the term.
It is because of such an inclusion that the workman could recover or raise an industrial dispute in respect of car allowances and the benefit of free telephones.
As otherwise, the same could not have been recovered as “wages” or no industrial dispute could have been raised.
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