Draft Labour Code on Wages may be introduced in Monsoon Session

Intra-ministerial talks will kickstart by end of this month

THE GOVERNMENT intends to introduce the proposed Labour Code on Wages in the Monsoon Session of Parliament, a senior labour ministry official said. Moving ahead on its proposal to consolidate 44 Central labour laws into four codes, the labour ministry has sent the proposed Labour Code on Wages to the Law Ministry for vetting, the official said.

“We aim to bring in the Labour Code on Wages in the Monsoon Session. Currently, it has been sent to Law Ministry for vetting, following which it would be sent to Union Cabinet for its approval before introduction in Parliament,” the official said.

Regarding other labour codes, the official said that intraministerial discussions will kickstart by the end of this month for the proposed Labour Code on Safety and Working Conditions, while the proposed Code on Industrial Relations is still at discussion stage with the interministerial committee on labour, which has finance minister Arun Jaitley, labour and employment minister Bandaru Dattatreya, petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan and power minister Piyush Goyal as its members.

The labour ministry has also finalised the agenda for the 47th Indian Labour Conference (ILC) to be held later this year. The ILC will feature discussions on universal social security, labour law amendments, reforms and codification, employment generation with special focus on women and transition to formal employment.

Dattatreya on Thursday chaired the 48th session of the Standing Labour Committee to decide the agenda for the 47th Indian Labour Conference.

In the meeting, Dattatreya briefed the participants about the government's various initiatives/measures, particularly the legislative measures, while Labour Secretary M Sathiyavathy said that employment generation is of utmost importance to the government and it’s working towards a conducive atmosphere for setting up of new establishments without compromising interests of the workers.

The Indian Labour Conference is the apex level tripartite consultative committee in the Labour Ministry and includes all the 12 central trade unions, central organisations of employers, all state governments/union Territories and central ministries/departments.

On the issue of hike in investment limit for exchange traded funds, the official said the Central Board of Trustees of the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) is expected to take up the issue of raising the limit to 15 per cent of the investible deposits from the existing 10 per cent in its next meeting at Mahabaleshwar on May 27. "It has been a long pending issue and we will discuss it in the next meeting of CBT. Hopefully, there will be a decision," the official said.

The issue was deferred in the previous meeting of CBT held on April 12. The retirement fund body can invest 5 to 15 per cent of its investible deposits into equity or equity linked schemes as per its investment pattern. The EPFO had decided to invest only 5 per cent of its investible deposits of around Rs 1 lakh crore in 2015-16 and 10 per cent in 2016-17. The EPFO, which has a total corpus of over Rs 7 lakh crore, has invested Rs 18,069 crore in the ETFS till February 18, 2017 that yielded a return of 18.13 per cent on these investments.

Labour ministry has also finalised agenda for the 47th Indian Labour Conference to be held later this year