Equal work alone not enough to claim equal pay: Supreme Court

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.

According to the court, an employee cannot claim equal pay merely by showing that another employee performs identical or similar duties. 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.

A bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Sheel Nagu said that the law on “equal pay for equal work” has evolved from the earlier approach under which similarity of work could be enough to seek parity. Today, the doctrine requires courts to examine whether the two groups of employees are equal in all material respects, the bench said.

“Equal pay cannot be claimed by merely showing identical work,” said the bench, laying down the factors that a claimant-employee must establish for seeking parity. These include parity in the source of recruitment, educational qualifications and experience, appointment through a constitutional process, and the nature of responsibilities and accountability.

“Mere functional similarity of work has been held to be no longer enough,” the court said in its judgment released on Thursday.

The ruling came in a dispute involving higher secondary school teachers (junior) in government-aided schools in Kerala. The teachers had been directly recruited under a 1998 government order and sought the full-time pay scale and allowances being extended to teachers in the same cadre who had entered the higher secondary schools through transfer or promotion.

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 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. The position subsequently developed into a more exacting test based on service rules.

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. 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.