The Supreme Court on Thursday, April 27, started hearing arguments on a bunch of petitions filed by employees against managements of newspaper companies for contempt of court. The lead petitioner in the case is Abhishek Raja, a Dainik Jagran employee, versus Sanjay Gupta, one of the owners of Dainik Jagran.

In February 2014, the SC had upheld the validity of a body popularly called the Majithia wage board, and ordered the implementation of its recommendations. These recommendations were about salaries of newspaper employees. The Majithia wage board had suggested formulae for calculations of salaries that would result – in most cases – in higher wages for journalists. The central government accepted these recommendations in November 2011.

A number of newspaper managements went to court against the implementation of these recommendations. In 2014, they lost the case in the Supreme Court. Despite this, they have not implemented the SC orders, the petitioners allege.

The salaries paid to all but a few fortunate journalists are paltry. A senior reporter working for a regional language publication in a city such as Mumbai, which has the highest salary levels in India, would typically draw a salary of around Rs 30,000 to Rs 35,000 after eight or more years in the field. English language publications pay better salaries, but even these are far from extravagant.

Reporters with years of experience working for major English national dailies in tier 2 cities such as Bhopal and Kanpur typically earn salaries in the range of Rs 30,000 to 35,000. In Delhi and Mumbai, the average net salary for a reporter or sub editor in a mainstream English publication after five or more years in the profession is around Rs 40,000 per month.

The pay for journalists working in smaller publications is worse, and employment conditions extremely insecure.

For instance, one Mumbai newspaper, the Paid Media Journal (name changed), followed a practice of not giving appointment letters or job contracts to journalists. The owners would tell the sub editor or reporter, verbally, to come to work from the next day – or not. They also appointed people as correspondents in various towns whose principal job it was to bring advertisements for the newspaper, rather than file news reports. In addition to all this, they ran advertorials as news.

A senior editor or reporter in this organisation, after 10 or more years in the profession, would earn a salary of around Rs 30,000 to 35,000.

“No newspaper reports on the condition of journalists,” says Supreme Court advocate Parmanand Pandey, who, along with senior counsel Colin Gonsalves, is representing the employees in the Majithia case. In many publications, journalists are forced to work for as little as Rs 15,000 a month, says Pandey. “This is a pittance,” he says. “It is a demeaning amount.”

In comparison, a driver working for the central government earns an entry-level salary of Rs 25,000 a month.

There are employees in media companies who may not earn even a pittance as salary. Every major press club in India has tales of publications that simply give shady or desperate ‘correspondents’ visiting cards and identity cards, using which they are expected to generate their own ‘salaries’.

The wage board was intended to avoid such malpractices.

While making its recommendations, the Majithia Wage Board had estimated that wages would rise to about 13.5 per cent of the gross revenue for big newspapers, up from an average 10 per cent. The additional burden on smaller newspapers would be three per cent of gross revenues, the Board had calculated.

Newspaper managements have, however, consistently opposed implementing its recommendations on grounds of costs. In an unsigned editorial published this January, The Times of India said that “implementation of the latest wage board recommendations has bled a number of print companies to the point of sickness after the previous government accepted the board’s report and forced newspapers to raise salaries by 45-50% along with arrears – so that blue collar staff including peons, clerks and drivers in certain scales are now paid more than three times what they earn in any other industry in India.”

Hitherto profitable large publishers went into the red because of unsustainably high wage board payouts, the ToI said. “The venerable Hindu reported a pre-tax loss in 2013-14 and 2014-15 as staff costs soared due to unsustainably high wage board payouts. The country’s largest news agency, the not-for-profit Press Trust of India, has been similarly affected as a 173% rise in staff costs in 2013-14 over the previous year led to a sharp spike in operating losses, which have since remained high.”

The same newspapers, however, seem to have no dearth of money to pay a chosen few.

The Delhi Union of Journalists found from public documents of Bennett Coleman & Company Ltd, the publishers of The Times of India, that in 2010-11, Rs 102 crore out of a wage bill of Rs 551 crore was paid to just 40 employees. On average, each of these 40 people therefore earned more that Rs 2.5 crore per annum.

More current figures are hard to come by, but it is anecdotally known in the industry that the salaries paid to a chosen few in big newspapers have become even more astronomical from 2010 to now. These individuals typically hold journalistic designations while doing public relations on behalf of corporate or political interests, or human resource management work. They often reduce wage bills on behalf of their masters by firing people below them who earn paltry thousands.

Very little information about the problems in the media reaches readers, because the media is not transparent about itself.

“There is a blackout of news relating to media in media,” says Pandey.

The current case before the Supreme Court in the Majithia wage board case is a contempt petition that was filed in February 2015. Its origins go back to May 2011, says Pandey, when the Ananda Bazar Patrika management went to court against implementation of the wage board’s recommendations. Thereafter a clutch of petitions was filed by others including The Times of India, Indian Express and Dainik Jagran. The Hindustan Times simply ignored the recommendations, and began instead to move journalists to a new digital venture with designations such as “content creator”, as a way to get around the Majithia wage board and the Working Journalists Act. Digital ventures and television are not currently covered under the Act.

The Working Journalists Act of 1955 lays down service conditions for journalists. The Act followed recommendations of the Press Council covering minimum notice period, gratuity, provident fund, settlement of industrial disputes, leave with pay, hours of work and minimum wages. It also specifies notice periods for different categories of employees in cases of retrenchment, extending to as much as six months in the case of Editor. Salaries, under the Working Journalists Act, were to be decided by wage boards that would be constituted from time to time.

Newspaper owners have attacked the Act almost since its inception.

The first case against the first wage board and the Working Journalists Act was filed by Ramnath Goenka’s Express group of newspapers, which was then the biggest newspaper group in the country, in 1957. Others including the Hindustan Times, Press Trust of India and Free Press Journal filed similar petitions.

“They started attacking the Working Journalists Act,” says Pandey. They also questioned why there should be a wage board deciding wages in print media alone, and not in any other industry.

“If the Working Journalists Act is declared null and void, the wage board automatically lapses,” he points out.

The Act was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1958, and ever since. However, its implementation has been patchy at best. It is generally observed more in the breach.

The current case was heard and decided by former Chief Justice of India P Sathasivam, who had decided, in March 2014, that the wage board and the Working Journalists Act were to be upheld.

When this judgment came, proprietors had the opportunity to pay arrears for the period from November 11, 2011 to March 2014 in four instalments.

“The majority of newspapers did not do so,” says Pandey. “So in February 2015 we filed the contempt petition.” Other similar petitions bubbled up from all over the country. These petitions were hanging fire for the past couple of years.

Proprietors have been using the time to their advantage, says Pandey. “A lot of employees have been shown the door…thousands have been sacked.”

Many more were threatened to withdraw cases or face transfers to places such as Dantewada, he adds. This was brought to the attention of the court, which asked Labour Commissioners to file reports.

Arguing before the Supreme Court on Thursday, senior counsel Gonsalves pointed out that it is patently self-evident that contempt of court has been wilfully committed by newspaper managements.

The managements on their part are arguing that they have entered into contracts with employees, under which the employees are satisfied with the terms they are getting. Their arguments are yet incomplete, and will continue at the next hearing on May 3.

“The bulk of employees are denied even the bare minimum,” says Pandey. The wages specified by the Majithia wage board are the minimum – all newspaper employees, whether on contract or permanent, are eligible to receive “not less than specified wages” in accordance with the Act, the counsels for the employees have pointed out in court. Those who do receive more than this minimum obviously have little incentive to go to court for implementation of the wage board’s recommendations.

The eventual outcome of the case will affect journalism, and the lives of journalists, around the country. It will bring to a close another chapter in the long struggle between newspaper barons and journalists that started with the battle over the largely unimplemented Working Journalists Act of 1955.