The shaky foundation of the labour law reforms -KR Shyam Sundar

-The Hindu

It could be a long wait before employers and workers enjoy the so-called benefits extended by the labour codes

The National Democratic Alliance government enacted the Code on Wages in August 2019 and the other three Codes, viz., the Industrial Relations Code, the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code and Code on Social Security (CSS) in September 2020. Later, it had framed the draft rules albeit incompletely under all the codes — incompletely because the rules have not covered some aspects of the Codes, e.g. rules regarding recognition of central trade unions have not been framed so far.

A rushed exercise

Controversies surround the processes of the enactment of codes and the framing of rules. The Government has held only symbolic and partial consultation with the central trade unions. The three codes were passed in Parliament even as the Opposition parties, otherwise insignificant, boycotted the proceedings. The tearing hurry in which the Government carried out the reforms even during the COVID-19 period gave tremendous hope to employers and potential investors. It announced its intentions of implementing the Codes from April 1, 2021 even as State governments were completely unprepared with the rules. Further, the major political parties reallocated their energies to regional elections rather than the implementation of codes. Symbolically, labour law reforms have been affected and the government can boast of it. Since the Government has not shown serious intent to implement the codes, the NDA government effected reforms to boast that it has executed the long-pending reforms; simply put, it is more symbolic rather than a meaningful act.

Court directives

The central government has deferred the possible date of implementation to October 1, 2021, again tentatively. In the meanwhile, the Supreme Court of India has exerted pressure on both the central and the State governments to implement a ‘one nation, one ration card’ (ONOR) scheme and register all the unorganised workers under the National Database for Unorganized Workers (NDUW), which was to have been done by July 31, 2021. Government agencies are rushing to comply with both the directives. In ONOR, Aadhaar seeding and the universal availability of an electronic point of sale (EPOS) system are necessary. And for the NDUW, it has to register each of the approximately 400 million workers, a conservative figure.

Perhaps, the Supreme Court passed such an extraordinary perhaps impracticable order following the hesitancy in early 2020 to provide relief to suffering migrant workers following the national lockdown. The governments did not honour the Supreme Court’s orders relating to the registration of construction workers for many years. So, it has a bad track record. One is not sure when governments would comply fully and well with the Supreme Court’s orders. Unorganised workers including migrant workers will continue to be deprived of their promised and extended entitlements.

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