With Opp. away, govt sneaks in labour code

The government on Wednesday pushed through a set of key pieces of legislation that will impact the lives over 50 crore people who form the country’s workforce. The Industrial Relations Code, 2020, the Code on Social Security, 2020, and the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020, along with the code on wages, which has already been enacted, subsume and replace 29 central laws that governed the country’s industrial relations.

The Industrial Relations Code raises the threshold on the number employees needed in an organisation for retrenchment and closure of establishments without government approval to 300 from 100. While the law throws job security of a large number of people into the wilderness, it is welcomed by the industry as it makes hiring and firing easy. It also redefines the sole negotiating union in an establishment as the one in which more than 51 per cent of the workers are members. Establishments now need not listen to the voice of smaller sections of their employees. The Code on Social Security provides for universal social security to all workers, including the unorganised and the gig and platform workers who account for over 90 per cent of the total workforce. The Bill mandates that the governments set up social security funds for them and fixes the maximum hours of work as eight per day. It is to e sen hw th provision to allow women to work in hazrdous industries, albeit with safety measures, will benefit them. A redeeming feature is the attention on inter-state guest workers: the government will now have to maintain a database on them online. They can also avail the benefits of the public distribution system either in the native state or the state of employment, and insurance and provident fund benefits available to other workers. Critics have noted an alarming and unusual feature in the bills that gives the government wide powers to frame rules that will form the operational part of the legislation. They include the conditions for increasing the threshold for lay-offs, retrenchment, and closure, for applicability of different social security schemes to establishments, and specifying safety standards, and working conditions to be provided by establishments under the occupational safety code. The government has made its intention clear when it said the purpose of labour reforms is to provide a transparent system to suit the changed business environment. The codes also empower the state government to offer relaxations in provisions on labour security, with an aim to trigger a race to attract capital.

That the codes cleared parliamentary scrutiny in less than three hours of discussion, that too when the Opposition was boycotting the proceedings, reflects the disdain the government has shown towards not only to parliamentary practices but also to the people whose lives they will impact. The government showed a similar high-handedness when it got the farm bills passed. Every trade union, including the Bharatiya Mazdur Sangh affiliated to the Sangh Parivar, has voiced their protest against the anti-labour provisions in the codes. It remains to be seen how the government will tackle the disaffection within India’s workforce.