Their joint platform has already announced a demonstration against the codes on November 26 and a two-days general strike across the country during the coming budget session of the Parliament of India in 2022. November 26 will mark the completion of the one year of general strike against the codes and the farmer’s agitation against the farm laws.

The immediate cause of concern for the workforce is that the Union Government is planning to implement all the four labour codes at one go, though the government is not focusing on any specific deadline. The central trade unions are however alarmed because the Centre is closely monitoring the legal process being carried out by states.

The rules for the Code on Wages have already been finalised but the Union Ministry of labour has held it back for several reasons including the states were not ready with their rules and were busy in tackling the COVID-19 crisis. The private sector was also not ready for their implementation and had wanted more time to get ready for the change. The draft rules are now being finalized for the other three codes – the Code on Industrial Relations, the Code on Social Security, and the Code on Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions.

However, as of now, as many as nine states and Union Territories have finalised their draft notifications for rules for all the four labour codes. They are – Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Punjab, and Jammu & Kashmir.

Since, labour is in the concurrent list of the Constitution of India, states are also required to frame their rules according to the codes passed by the Parliament of India. It is the regal requirement for implementation of the central labour codes. With finalization of the draft notification for rules by nine states, the country is one step closer to the implementation of the codes, though the central trade unions have termed them anti-labour, and have been protesting against them ever since they were passed in the Parliament of India.

The Union Ministry of Labour had even a review meeting with states on November 9 to assess the rule-framing process. States were asked to speed up the process so that the codes could be implemented at the earliest. States also need to discuss all legal ramifications of the rules before the codes get implemented on the national scale.

As for the Code of Wages, as many as 21 states have completed the rulemaking process and issued their draft rules, which is the highest in respect of all the four codes. However, only 18 states have issued draft rules for the Code of Industrial Relations, 14 for the Code on Social Security, and 10 for Code on Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions.

Apart from framing up rules and draft notifications, the centre is also pushing for fixing up the national floor for minimum wages. It may be mentioned that the Ministry of Labour and Employment had constituted an expert group for this purpose in June this year with a brief to provide technical inputs to all the states.

The draft rules are prepared and circulated for publication with a provision of 45 days for feedback from stakeholders. The suggestions, if received any, are then considered and, if required, changes are made into the draft. After that they are sent for final publication and notification and thus they are implemented. It may also be mentioned that except for the Code on Wages, draft rules were circulated for feedback in November 2020, however, the process was delayed for various reasons and the Modi Government could not implement the codes from April 1, 2021, the date from which they were originally planned to be implemented.

The Code on Wages was passed in the Parliament of Indian in 2019 and rules are already framed. It proposes a minimum wage for workers and widening of social security net for workers to included gig and platform worker, but also give greater flexibility to employers to hire and fire workers without government permission. It is a matter of serious concern for workforce and they fear deterioration of their service conditions. Current threshold of 100 workers has been increased to 300 for implementation of this rule, which will cover almost all the enterprises in the country barring only a few thousand.

It is in this backdrop the national convention of the central trade unions held last week have passed a resolution demanding the scraping of the four codes, passed in 2019 and 2020 in the Parliament of India terming them anti-worker and anti-people. (IPA Service)