Context
The labour codes will only better India’s ‘ease of doing business’ ranking instead of improving conditions of employment
In news
The Union Labour Minister claimed that the four labour codes would generate employment and secure the basic rights of the workers.
Issue
Labour codes
has not been universally welcomed by workers and their organisations, with even the Bharatiya Janata Party-affiliated Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh opposing the codes.
Universal social security
- The codes mandate benefits of Employees’ State Insurance (ESI) and Provident Fund (PF) only for workers belonging to establishments employing 10 workers or more.
- This leaves out nearly 80% of all Indian workers — the informal sector — from the ambit of these benefits.
- These workers have to be satisfied with a promise of some special schemes for them in their as yet undefined future.
- They may also be allowed access to underutilised Employees’ State Insurance Corporation hospitals — and even that only on payment of a usage charge
- The most ubiquitous workers we encounter in our daily life — our domestic help, or the street vendor, or even the paper boy who delivers the morning newspaper home — are all left out of reckoning of this universal coverage.
The Labour Codes
- The Code on Wages, 2019 (the “Code on Wages”);
- The Code on Social Security, 2020 (the “SS Code”);
- The Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 (the “OSH Code”); and
- The Industrial Relations Code, 2020 (the “IR Code”)..
Source: The Hindu
