Labour Codes: Betrayal of Labour Rights
Sanjay Roy
THE Government of India proposed four Labour Codes claiming to reform the employer-worker relationship which was otherwise archaic and complex with too many rules and regulations. The much-needed labour reform as had been argued was meant to simplify the rules, address the changing needs of production flexibility and to take care of the ‘unprotected’ who are employed in the informal sector. These reforms are proposed in the context of the larger argument that competitiveness of Indian producers suffers due to labour market rigidity. Inflexible wages, complex rules related to layoffs and unionisation have created hindrances for faster progress. Therefore, the purpose of reforms was meant to ensure greater freedom of capital to coerce the working people in the name of competitiveness and in that conflict the State acts in favour of capital on the premise that capital’s interest encapsulates progress and development of the nation!
The working people of India, who happen to be the majority had lost their share in GDP consistently in the past three decades. The growth of their real wages shows a declining trend for most of the sectors although productivity increased, and large numbers of working people are forced to accept longer hours of work without their real incomes rising while many young people are waiting to be employed. Hence it is this India that has to offer sacrifices for the India Inc who made huge profits during the past one and half decades with returns being highest in the recent past. The four Labour Codes on wages, industrial relations, social security, and occupational safety and health, working conditions convey four key messages: increased freedom for employers to lay off workers; wages should be downwardly flexible; unions should be turned into labour syndicates; workers in the informal sector do not deserve any social security.
HIRE AND FIRE
Indian industries and industrialists often complain that with the ebb and flow of business cycle or seasonal fluctuations they should enjoy the flexibility of laying off workers which otherwise becomes a fixed cost that make them uncompetitive in the global market. Hence, they should get the freedom to fire workers during downswing and again hire during an upturn. The philosophy behind increasing the threshold from 100 to 300 workers requiring no prior permission from the government to fire according to the Code on Industrial Relations 2020 is that the cost of maintaining and reproducing the energy and labour power of the worker should not fall upon the employer when production volumes are cut down due to market fluctuations. The worker to the capitalist is like any other input – coal or electricity, water and raw materials available in the mines, nature or grid which should be accessible according to the requirements of production. The underlying idea is that society should be the supplier of these human beings to make them available alive and physically capable whenever needed. Hence, the cost of reproducing labour power during the lean period must be socialised while higher profits that would be derived during boom should only be appropriated as private gains by the employers.
The freedom of capital to hire and fire however comes with its dialectical opposite, that is unfreedom of workers in mobilising collective action. Strikes can only be called with a prior 14-day notice to the employer and to be organised within 60 days of issuing notice. Also strikes and lockouts are prohibited during the pendency of conciliation proceedings or when a settlement or award is in operation. These legal and penal procedures restrict the process of calling a strike particularly when it is required to mobilise workers on an immediate basis. Also, the code advocates for ‘sole negotiating union’ attaining 51 per cent vote to be recognised as workers’ representative in tripartite negotiations. This is nothing but aiming to reduce labour unions to labour syndicates. Trade unions do have short and long-term goals and workers choose their representations based on both. Workers may organise themselves from various perspectives informed by differing ideologies. This sole negotiating bargaining power helps killing smaller trade unions which is a way of monopolising voice. Big trade unions, particularly those in favour of ruling political combination, take advantage of garnering support as the sole negotiator. If getting support of more than half of the workers in a factory is a criterion for representation, what is the rationale for allowing a political party not being able to manage more than 50 per cent vote of the people of India to run the government on behalf of the people of the country or a state? Democracy is not only about distinguishing political majority and minority but most importantly creating a conducive environment for plurality of ideas and voices.
WAGES AND SOCIAL SECURITY
The length of the working day and determination of wages have always been a terrain of class struggle. For a capitalist, an ideal working day if feasible could be extended to 24 hours and the preferable wage to be paid to workers would be zero! Labour historians have offered enough examples that subhuman labour conditions and slavery or chattel labour continued to exist in modern capitalism for long. Also, slavery had not been abandoned by capital relations on moral grounds rather fixed cost of maintaining slaves and their families for life turned out to be an inefficient working arrangement. Particularly with the spread of money economy and predominance of exchange values hiring workers according to the requirement of production against payment of wages also created the demand side of the economy through which produced values could be realised. Therefore, capital as a class always preferred longer working hours and reducing wages to the minimum which is necessary for the worker to barely survive.
In the new labour code, there is no specific mention of periodic assessment of the changes in the consumption basket of working-class families that ensure a basic minimum wage. The Code on Wages 2019 also makes a provision to extend the working hours to 12 hours. This is essentially a legal denouncement of an eight hours working day that the working class achieved as the legal maximum working hours through struggles historically linked to May Day. Indeed, it is true that the eight-hour working day has already been diluted in many workplaces from factories to shops to gig services and software firms. The government wants to legitimise this extending of the working day beyond eight hours through the new Labour Code.
More than 90 per cent of the workers in India are deprived of any effective social security system. It was expected that the proposed labour reforms would aim to address the exclusion of the majority from the social security net. In some sense the plea of greater flexibility in employment was backed by two broad planks: the capitalists need greater flexibility in employment and wages and the augmented vulnerability of the working people due to such changes would be cushioned through extended coverage and provisions of social security networks. In other words, greater freedom of exploitation offered to the individual capitalist would be somewhat balanced by limited social security provided by the capitalist state. This had been the strategy of faster accumulation of capital in many countries with huge endowment of labour. The Social Security Code 2020, however, does not even ensure any scope of social security for the unorganised workers working in enterprises with employment below ten. These are the most unprotected and vulnerable sections of the working class who hardly enjoy any political voice. As externalisation of work increases through offshoring and outsourcing and jobs are being subcontracted to smaller units, more and more workers will be excluded from the legal provisions of social security. Instead of extending social security provisions to more workers, the proposed labour code on social security continues to exclude the vast number of informal workers who require the State sponsored provisions of social security the most.
Working people emerge as a class through their fight against exploitation and oppression. It is through struggles for protecting their rights they could perceive their class enemy and extend support to the cause of the most vulnerable sections of the working people. In the entire history of capitalism workers didn’t receive any right or entitlement on moral grounds, it is only through struggle they emerge as a social force compelling the ruling class to accept workers as human beings and not an inanimate disposable input for production.
To resist the betrayal of rights, the workers of factories, mines, shops and malls, gig workers, care and entertainment workers, service employees and all those employed by capital or working as self-employed but entangled with capital relations, exploited or oppressed and dispossessed should come together to raise their voice for their rightful claim as creators of all values in society.
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