THE Central Government had notified the implementation of the four Labour Codes from November 21, 2025 onwards without heeding the collective opinion of the Central Trade Unions immediately after the BJP victory in the Bihar Assembly Elections. These Codes strike at the heart of workers’ interests and aim at enslaving the workers to squeeze them more brutally. Consequently, on December 30, 2025, the central Labour Ministry had published the draft Central Rules for all four Labour Codes. Now, the central government has notified the Final Central Rules for all four Labour Codes on May 8, 2026, as expected, immediately after the announcement of recent Assembly election results.

In its third term of governance, the Modi regime with absolute majority in parliament followed by its victory in Assembly elections, and notwithstanding its lack of credibility, has become even more hyper-active in the interests of its corporate masters to implement the Labour Codes. These are nothing but a comprehensive project of imposing conditions of virtual slavery on the working people as a whole. These codes would snatch from them almost all rights and entitlements of workers at their workplaces. All the basic rights of workers relating to defined working conditions including working hours, minimum wages, social security etc. and also their collective rights to unionisation, collective bargaining, agitations/struggles and any form of collective expression of protests, including the right to strike, are being snatched away, together with atrocious and vindictive punitive measures against any collective dissent by workers. Thus, in essence the Labour Codes are a blueprint to impose conditions of virtual slavery on the working people in the interests of the corporate/employers’ class.

Moreover, the decision of implementing the Labour Codes is integral to the ongoing project of the monopoly corporate class to drastically curb the basic democratic and constitutional rights of the common people including the rights to freedom of expression and assertion of dissent through numerous enactments like UAPA, PMLA, the latest edition of Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), etc. Numerous administrative and executive measures aimed at rabid authoritarianism with a fascistic intent are being taken in almost all forms of governance. These are aimed at bulldozing all democratic and collective opposition to the pro-corporate policies which are against national interests. Collective action, even collective lodging of complaints by workers and their unions, are being interpreted as “organised crime” as per section 111 of the BNS, leading to harsh police action including non-bailable imprisonment of the workers and their union leaders. Already such instances of criminal action against workers and union leaders for collectively representing their grievances either to the management or to the Labour Department have started taking place in many states, implicating trade union leaders and activists in numerous cases.

This was nakedly manifested in the recent gruesome crackdown on the workers’ spontaneous upsurge in North India – especially in the Delhi NCR region and states around it. Such repression and overarching authoritarian interventions, including threats by the employers/managements in various industries and establishments and even in various government departments, are aimed at restraining and virtually prohibiting day to day collective activities of the workers and their unions like holding gate/departmental meetings, distributing leaflets, submitting memorandums etc. and thereby seeking to create an atmosphere of fear among the workers. The united working class movement cannot remain a silent onlooker to these disastrous machinations against the country and the people.

Notwithstanding the collective resistance by the Indian working class since the enactment of the Codes in 2019-20, the neo-fascist Modi regime is hell-bent on implementing them. They was rolled-out on May 8, 2026 by publishing the Final Central Rules in utter disregard of the collective opinion of Indian workers. Workers across North India have responded with massive strikes and huge protests. All these militant and spontaneous upsurges of workers have proved the fallacy of the government’s claims about the Labour Codes and shown that such nefarious games of the corporate-government nexus can very well be resisted.

The CITU has called for defiance and resistance not only to protect the hard-earned rights of the working class but to make them understand the link between the attacks on their rights and the neoliberal policies being pursued by the Modi government only in the interest of employers’ class. The working class needs to be recognise the inherent exploitative character of the present capitalist system and unite all the exploited and oppressed sections to change it.

As an immediate reaction to this ant-worker move by the Government of India, the CITU has called upon the working class in general and all its unions in particular to come out in militant protest by organising rallies/demonstrations etc., and burning copies of the Codes and Rules.