Scope of exemption from attachment of wages and bonus of a workman.

The point for determination in this application for stay is whether the bonus granted to a workman is exempt from attachment under section 60 (A) of the Code of Civil Procedure.

The facts are.-T. Viswanatha Nair employed in Wimco at Tiruvothiyur filed a suit against Munuswami, the petitioner before us, for Rs. 400 odd. This Munuswami had been granted a bonus of about Rs. 200 by the West India Match Factory in which he was employed. This Viswanatha Nair filed an application for attachment before judgment and attached that sum. Munuswami has thereupon filed this Civil Revision Petition and obtained an order of interim stay.

In order to decide this controversy we must first of all find out the meaning of the terms "wages" and "bonus" as can be gathered from (a) standard lexicons (b) various Acts and (c) case-law on the subject.

Meaning of the word "Wages"

Webster (International Dictionary of English Language, 1927). Pay given for labour, usually manual or mechanical, at short stated intervals, as distinguished from salaries or fees.

Theoretical Economics.-The share of the annual product or national dividend which goes as a reward to labour, as distinct from the remuneration received by capital in its various forms. This economic or technical sense of the word wages is broader than the current sense, and includes not only amounts actually paid to labourers, but the remuneration obtained by those who sell the products of their own work, and the wages of superintendence or management, which are earned by skill in directing the work of others.

Funk and Wagnalls:-Payment for service rendered, especially the pay of a artisans or labourers receiving a fixed sum per day, week, or month, or for, a certain amount of work (piece work); hire; usually in the plural, often construed as singular.

Rural econ.-The remuneration received by labour in its broadest sense as distinguished from that received by capital, and including the expenses incurred for superintendence and management, called respectively wages of superintendence and wages of management. Ballentine (Law Dictionary, II Edn., 1948). As the word is employed in common parlance, it refers specifically to the payment made for manual labour, or other labour of menial or mechanical kind, as distinguished from "salary" and from "fees" which denote compensation paid to professional men. In its application to labourers and employees, it conveys the idea of subordinate occupation which is not very remunerative, of not much independent responsibility, but rather subject to immediate supervision.1

As the word is used in the exemption statutes, it is intended to include what an employer owes his employee for personal services rendered in that relation, and it matters not whether it is called wages or salary.2

Burrows.-(Words and Phrases Judicially Defined (1943)).

By codicil a testator bequeathed two years "wages" to his head gardener. "The question is what the testator meant by the word "wages". I can find no assistance from the Truck Acts or the Workmen’s Compensation Acts, nor is there any authority, curiously enough, which covers the question. Suppose a friend had asked the testator what he paid his head gardener. No doubt the testator would have said that he paid him £3, 9s. 9 d. a week, and he might have added; "Remember that we are in the country and he has a house". In the ordinary use of language the testator would have mentioned the cash payment made week by week. . . It appears to me that in the gift in the 14th codicil cash wages were meant ". Re Peacock, Public Trustee v. Birchenough3, per Clauson, J., at page 302. Barclay and Co. v. Earles’ Shipbuilding and Engineering Company4, Palace Shipping Company Ltd. v. Caine5, Archer v. James6 Gordon v. Jennings7. Wharton.-The compensation agreed upon by a master to be paid to a servant, or any other person hired to do work or business for him.

Wages of any “servant, labourer, or workman” cannot be attached to satisfy judgments-Wages Attachment A