Doing the same work does not necessarily mean doing work of equal value, and that distinction can make all the difference when it comes to pay, the Supreme Court has ruled.
To establish a right to pay parity, the claimant must demonstrate broad parity on factors including the source of recruitment, educational qualifications, experience, the manner in which the appointment was made, and the nature of the responsibilities and accountability attached to the job. The teachers pointed out that their qualifications, duties and responsibilities were identical to those of the transferees and promotees. The Supreme Court, however, upheld the distinction in pay, finding that the two groups could not claim equivalence in experience. The position subsequently developed into a more exacting test based on service rules. It noted that even employees holding the same posts and performing similar work could be paid differently where there was a difference in the degree of responsibility, reliability or confidentiality, provided the classification was bona fide, reasonable and had a rational nexus with its objective. The court also reiterated that educational qualifications, merit and experience can constitute valid grounds for differentiation in pay. The fact that an employee has not gone through the same recruitment process can, in appropriate cases, itself make a difference.
The bench traced the evolution of the law from its earlier judgments, observing that the court had, in the last century, treated equal pay for equal work as an expansive anti-exploitation principle under Articles 14 and 39(d) of the Constitution.
An employee cannot claim equal pay merely by showing that another employee performs identical or similar duties, according to the court. “Mere functional similarity of work has been held to be no longer enough,” the court said in its judgment released on Thursday. Referring to its earlier decisions, the court said equal pay depends not merely on the volume or functional nature of work but also on qualitative differences such as reliability and responsibility.
In the Kerala dispute, the court found the greater experience of teachers who had been transferred or promoted from lower schools to be a valid and intelligible differentia having a nexus with the objective of granting them higher pay. The benefit, the court noted, effectively preserved the full-time status and benefits they had enjoyed before their promotion.
