This is an application for interpretation of certain term of the settlement arrived at between the Anfords '(Pakistan) Workers' Union and Messrs Anford (Pakistan) Limited on 17th April 1970.
2. The Management had agreed to pay bonus equivalent to one month's basic salary. The relevant portion, which requires interpretation, reads as under :-- " . . . . .The bonus in coming year will be paid equivalent to one month basic salary."
3. According to the Management, as would appear from their letter dated February 1971, the basic salary of the workers is "the first salary on which they were employed in this Com--pany".
According to the Company "the increase in the salary by way of annual increment does not increase the basic salary."
4. Mr. Wahid Bashir for the Union admitted that basic salary does not include the various allowances that may be permissible to a worker. He, however, submitted that the annual increment, which is allowed to a workman, forms part of the basic salary of the worker. Basic wage is defined in the Dictionary of English by Earl Jowitt as under :- "A minimum wage (not including allowances, overtime pay, etc.) paid by agreement or by the award of a tribunal or under the provisions of a statute."
5. What may be the basic salary in one year may not be the basic salary the next year. If a worker starts with a salary of Rs. 100 per month with Rs. 5.00 as Annual Increment, hi basic salary for the first year would be Rs. 100.00 and for the next year it would be Rs.105.00. There is a distinction between the consolidated pay and basic wages. Consolidated pay includes the various allowances which a worker may be entitled to receive, while his basic salary is the salary together with the increment: which he is entitled to get every year. I would hold that basic salary, as used in the term of agreement arrived at between the parties on 17th April 1970, means the salary together with the increment, if any, which a worker is entitled to get every year.