Parliament passes three key labour reform Bills; trade unions feel slavery imposed on workers

Paving the way for the enactment of Labour Codes, the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday passed three Bills that remove stringent conditions on winding up of companies and easing restrictions on firing from 100 to 300 employees by firms without government sanction, moves the government believes will attract more investment and job creation.

The passage of the Bill immediately attracted criticism from RSS-affiliated BMS, which said, the Codes were "tilted too much in favour of the employers and bureaucrat" and that none of their suggestions were accepted. CPI(M)-backed CITU said it was a recipe for imposing "virtual slavery on the working people".

The government had last year passed the Code on Wages and with the passage of three Codes, 29 central labour laws have been codified into four broad Codes.

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The passage of the three Codes came amid a boycott by the Opposition over the suspension of eight MPs on charges of "unruly behaviour". Ten Opposition leaders, including Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad and Trinamool Congress' Derek O'Brien, also wrote to Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu urging him not to pass these Bills in the absence of Opposition.

These Bills "affect the livelihood of crores of workers...It will be a great blot on democracy to have these Bills unilaterally today," they said in a joint letter but Naidu rejected it saying there were precedents of Bills being passed when parties have either boycotted or walked out of the House.

While it took just 103 minutes to get the three Bills passed in Rajya Sabha, an analysis by PRS Legislative showed the time spent on debating Code on Wages last year was 7:30 hours. However, the total time spent on passing the three Codes in both the Houses comes to just 4:45 hours. These three Codes have 411 clauses, 13 schedules and run into around 350 pages. When the Code on Wages was passed in Lok Sabha last year, the debate took 4:01 hours, it said.

Replying to the debate, Labour Minister Santosh Gangwar said these would provide a transparent system to suit the changing business environment.

He defended the provision in the Industrial Relations Code allowing the increase in the threshold for retrenchment, closure or lay off for a firm without government permission from 100 workers to 300, saying labour falls in the concurrent list of the Constitution and 16 states have already increased the threshold. He also referred to the Parliamentary Standing Committee report that recommended the same.

Gangwar said several firms so far were not increasing the strength of its workers to circumvent the existing laws and it was resulting in a rise in informal employment.

He also said that the Codes would provide universal social security by expanding the ambit of Employees' Provident Fund Organisation and Employees' State Corporation of India. A social security fund would also be set up to cover around 40 crore unorganised sector workers.

Those who participated in the debate on the Bills supported it, as no Opposition MPs were present.

In a statement, CITU said the taking of the three Codes together for passage reflects the government's "abnormal haste to satisfy their corporate capitalist masters through imposing conditions of virtual slavery on the working people, who actually create GDP for the nation".

"These Codes, now passed, will throw more than 74% of the industrial workers and 70% of industrial establishments in 'hire and fire regime' at the will of the employers. Even the formation of a trade union will be extremely difficult and it is imposing a virtual ban on workers’ right to strike and even collectively agitate on their grievances and demands to mention a few," CITU General Secretary Tapan Sen said.

BMS General Secretary Virjesh Upadhyay said the BMS and other trade unions have given detailed objections to the previous draft of the Industrial Relations Code but none of the objections raised by them as well as that of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Labour in favour of workers were considered.

"It is tilted too much in favour of the employers and bureaucrats and the last minute mutilations will adversely affect industrial peace in the country," he said.