The 75th Independence Day of India is practically the first for workers in the country without the official protection of crucial labour laws, like the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, the Factories Act, 1948 among others. Some of these laws are as old as the country’s independence itself, and all of them, in principle, aimed to safeguard workers’ basic rights and the condition of their freedom. Over the course of 2019-20, these have now been replaced by four new Labour Codes: The Code on Wages, the Industrial Relations Code, the Code on Social Security and the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code.
PUDR marks this occasion by releasing its report, ‘The Anti-Labour Codes’– on labour laws that, instead of protecting labour rights, actually take them away. The report offers an overview of the content of each of the four Codes with their implications on the rights of workers, while contextualizing them against the government’s pre-existing policy of ‘Ease of Doing Business’
and the de facto non-compliance with legal provisions even prior to their enactment.
Find the press statement here: Hinidi | English
