MP HAS HIGHEST PERCENTAGE OF JOBS PAYING LESS THAN MIN WAGE
With regard to workers being paid the minimum salary, in Uttar Pradesh, 79.9% of jobs pay below-minimum wage. In Maharashtra, 68.6% of jobs pay less than minimum wage and in Madhya Pradesh, 93.75% of jobs pay less than minimum wage. Previously, in January 2023, projecthero revealed that 87% of construction workers in India do not receive the government-mandated daily minimum wage. This was found to be true for the major cities of India (Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, and Pune). The construction industry is highly fragmented and unstructured, which enables the higher-ups in the industry to exploit workers by providing them with below-average and, often, below-minimum wages. Due to poor technological penetration, workers have to find employment through informal means, which leads to opacity regarding compensation amounts. Construction tech start up projecthero launched a wage discovery feature in its app that enables workers to make sure that they are not being exploited by being paid below-average and below-minimum wages. With pay transparency, employees can achieve a better standard of living, as they will know if they are being exploited and not being paid optimal salaries. Satya Vyas, Founder and CEO of projecthero, said, “Urban organised workforces have various ways of discovering the average salaries in their fields. Gig workers are also aware of their colleagues’ salaries, as they have fixed compensation amounts. With pay transparency, employees can achieve a better standard of living, as they will know if they are being exploited and not being paid optimal salaries. Hence, we thought that developing a feature to prevent wage-based exploitation and wage discrimination in the unorganised construction industry will help blue-collar workers understand their worth and fight for it.”