Class Jihad: A Blueprint for Enslavement of Workers
FOUR Labour Codes have been notified by the Government of India immediately after NDA’s major electoral victory in the Bihar Assembly elections, and the accompanying euphoria. The Codes on wages, industrial relations, occupational safety and social security override in the name of ‘simplification of 29 Labour Laws’.
The truth is, the Labour Codes dilute and remove vestiges of labour protection which were enshrined in those laws. On the question of job security, all possible roles of the Labour Department will be dispensed with. 90 per cent of the workforce who are engaged in the unorganised sector will be denied of all protections, as they do not have an appointing authority.
The union government claims that the Labour Codes will ensure minimum wage for all. However, a number of states will be forced to reduce the existing minimum wages and millions of workers including scheme workers will be excluded from minimum wages, not to speak of fair or living wage.
It is also claimed that the Labour Codes will usher in social security for gig and platform workers. However, there is no fund allocation nor any timeline. Without any mention of employer-employee relationship, what will Aadhaar do to ameliorate the situation for the workforce?
Another claim is that fixed-term employment as per the Labour Codes will ensure equal benefits. The truth is that it will only introduce temporary status permanently in perennial and core jobs, replacing all permanent jobs with short-term contracts. This will also lead to loss of continuity of service, seniority, and actual benefits and the consequent weakening of unionisation.
The Labour Codes withdraw the government from a custodian and regulator of compliance, abolish the very system of complaint-based inspection and substitute it with self-certification, which is a euphemism for the freedom to violate all existing provisions which were instituted for the protection of employees.
The Labour Codes are projected to improve protection of MSME, plantation, mine and construction workers. It could not be further from the truth. MSME workers are outside the purview of law and there is no mechanism for transparency in cess collection. The dilution of inspections in hazardous accidents, like mining and plantation can only result in more fatal accidents and the responsibility of the employers will be exempt from criminal culpability.
The union government in its press statements and social media engagements has been crying hoarse that they had held all possible consultations with the workers to replace the Labour Laws with the Labour Codes. The first National Commission on Labour in independent India, appointed in 1966, recommended for the holding of Indian Labour Conference (ILC) as an institutional arrangement for tripartite consultation between the government, employers and workers.
However, in the last decade, no session of the ILC has been held. Therefore, the Labour Codes, when enacted by the Parliament without any meaningful discussion or debate, had virtually followed a course of unilateral diktat of the Union government with the de-criminalisation of the offences of the employers and criminalisation of the efforts by employees to assert collective rights and bargaining, and obviously, the right to protest. This is precisely a heyday for one-sidedly imposing the opinion of the employers on the employees.
It is clear that the underlying direction of the Labour Codes is to facilitate to repeat ad nauseam as a slogan – ‘Ease of Doing Business’. Sadly, this has led to the presumptuous assessment that this will generate greater investments and consequently a higher rate of employment generation. This is completely divorced from the stark reality which is brought out by Annual Survey of Industries reports over the years.
These reveal that there is a continuous downturn in the share of wages in the net value addition, from 30.27 per cent in 1981-82 to just 15.97 per cent in 2023-24. During the same period, the employers’ profits have increased from 23.39 per cent to 51.01 per cent. The impact of the same process is all the more pronounced on labour. The Labour Bureau data for manufacturing sector shows that the decadal average growth rate has declined from 6.7 per cent in 2013-14 to 4.8 per cent in 2023-24.
The government admits that the number of unemployed educated youth is massive. The Economic Survey of 2024-25 shows that on an average 85 lakh jobs are to be generated annually for the next ten years, with youth jobless rate in India being the highest in South Asia at 17.6 per cent. NITI Aayog projects that artificial intelligence may affect 20 lakh tech jobs in India’s IT sector. Labour Bureau data for the manufacturing sector show that the decadal growth rate of persons engaged, which was 7.14 per cent between 2004-05 and 2013-14, has declined to 5.92 per cent between 2014-15 and 2023-24.
The figures clearly point to a sharply shrinking domestic demand. Removal of all restrictions on corporates and employers to exploit labour can only lead to greater inequality and unemployment, a recipe for complete destruction of domestic demand. How can such a precarious state of affairs induce investment?
The Labour Codes are indeed a blueprint for the further enslavement of workers. Actually, they signal the complete undermining of the basic tenets of economic production which need two entities – labour and capital – to operate. If the balance between the two is dispensed with, by the government stepping in to remove all regulations on the employers and labour is left to languish, the whole production system will snap and come to a standstill.
If one thinks of technology as an important element in the process of production, its deployment today is one-sidedly with capital. On the one hand, it will increase productivity, but no commensurate protection for labour will invariably lead to greater exploitation. Every provision of the Labour Codes signal in that direction. They therefore constitute a class jihad against labour who are struggling to survive.
The only way forward, therefore, is collective protest and struggle by the workers unitedly to take on this obnoxious reform which is a euphemism for infinitely empowering and weaponising the corporate employers. Fortunately, the growing unity of workers and the broadest sections of the peasantry also joining forces can strive to salvage the situation.
(November 26, 2025)
