India announces implementation of new codes to reform labour laws

NEW DELHI: India announced on Friday the implementation of four new codes that seek to simplify and streamline the existing, decades-old labour laws in the country, in a fresh attempt at reform to help liberalise conditions for investment.

The new labour codes will ensure better wages, safety, social security and welfare for the country’s workforce, the ministry of labour said in a statement.

The labour ministry said gig and platform work was defined for the first time in the new guidelines, seeking to provide better welfare.

“With expanded social security, stronger protections and nationwide portability of entitlements, the codes place workers, especially women, youth, unorganised, gig and migrant workers, firmly at the centre of labour governance,” the ministry said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party received parliamentary approval in 2020 to overhaul outdated labour laws, some dating back to British colonial rule. But they had not been implemented uniformly across the country due to political resistance and opposition from some trade unions.

The reforms have been a key part of Modi’s moves to liberalise conditions for investment and replace 29 laws with four labour codes to establish minimum wages, working conditions, and factory safety standards.

Some experts say the laws, aimed at protecting workers and streamlining labyrinthine regulation, exempt tens of thousands of smaller firms, and rob workers of a right to strike or receive benefits.

The new codes, in effect from Friday, are on wages (2019), the industrial relations code (2020), the code on social security (2020) and the occupational safety, health and working conditions code (2020).

Some of the reforms include mandatory appointment letters to all workers, minimum wages, free annual health check-up for workers above the age of 40 and opportunities for women to work at night in all types of work.

Indian state governments are allowed to pass their own labour laws, but the new codes issued by the federal government will over-ride these.

“These new labour reforms are an important step towards a self-reliant India and will give new momentum to the goal of a developed India by 2047,” Labour Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said in a post on X.