By V. K. Singh, President, AITUC, Uttar Pradesh
The government calls the four new labour codes “reforms”. The corporate lobby calls them “progress”. But for the working class of India, these codes are not reforms — they are erosion. Instead of strengthening rights hard-won by decades of struggle, they systematically dilute them, fragment them and make them easier to violate. Labour laws born out of sacrifice are being torn up in the name of “ease of doing business”. What is being ushered in is the ease of exploitation.
Trade unions across the country are rightly on the streets because they can see what lies behind the polished presentation — an architecture designed to weaken collective bargaining, expand employer impunity, and convert workers into replaceable, right-less labour units in the free market. The codes are not merely technically flawed — they are ideologically hostile to the working class.
- Anti-Labour and Anti-Union Clauses: A Design for Disempowerment
- Restrictions on the Right to Strike
The new Industrial Relations Code tightens the noose around strikes. Mandatory 14-day notice, extension of prohibition even after conciliation begins, and criminalisation of spontaneous industrial action — this is nothing but an attempt to tame working-class resistance. A right delayed is a right denied. A strike planned like a corporate meeting ceases to be a weapon — it becomes a ritual.
This is not regulation; it is neutering of democratic dissent inside the workplace. - Hire-and-Fire Made Easier
Factories with up to 300 workers can now lay off without government permission — earlier the threshold was 100. This one clause flips power entirely towards employers. Permanent employment becomes a myth. Security of service — once the backbone of labour rights — is being replaced with job vagabondage.
A worker who fears tomorrow cannot fight today. Precarity is being institutionalised. - Fixed-Term Employment: Permanence Replaced with Perishability
Fixed-term contracts are being normalised, weaving instability into the labour structure. An employee can be discarded after project completion, without compensation, without future obligation. The working class is being pushed into a cycle of disposable labour — work today, uncertainty tomorrow.
Corporate flexibility has been prioritised over human livelihood. - Weakening Trade Union Recognition
Stringent hurdles for union recognition, including increased membership percentage requirements and procedural obstacles, aim to undercut collective power. A union without recognition is a voice without amplification. Employers get the convenience of multiple splinter unions instead of one strong negotiating body.
Divide and rule is being made into law. - Dilution of Protective Welfare Provisions
The Social Security Code expands definitions only on paper, while access remains shallow. Gig and platform workers are “included” but without enforceable guarantees. Provident fund, maternity benefit, pension — everything is made contingent, flexible, postponable. Welfare is being transformed into voluntary charity rather than statutory right.
Rights are replaced with “schemes”; entitlements replaced with “benefits if feasible”.
- Restrictions on the Right to Strike
- Relaxation in Implementation: Penalties Diluted, Violations Incentivised
If the clauses themselves are anti-labour, the relaxed penal provisions make them lethal.- Reduced Penalties for Employer Violations
Earlier, violating labour protections invited real consequences. Now, penalties are softened, compounding is encouraged, and monetary fines replace prosecution. In plain terms — violation becomes affordable. Exploitation becomes a cost of business.
When law becomes toothless, capital becomes reckless. - Compliance Made “Self-Declaration Based”
Inspections can be replaced with randomised, web-based, self-certified compliance. This is not regulation; this is abdication. Instead of workers being protected by the state, employers are asked to certify themselves as compliant — foxes issuing safety certificates for the henhouse.
Surveillance of labour has been replaced by trust in capital — history repeatedly warns what this leads to. - Inspector-Raj Narrative Used to Kill Inspection Itself
Unions always demanded transparent, accountable inspection — not its burial. The new system reduces labour inspection from a right to a lottery. If exploitation is not detected, it does not cease; it becomes invisible.
Where law cannot reach, injustice thrives. - Composition and Compounding of Offences
Many labour violations can now be “settled” monetarily, outside court. This transforms legal violation into negotiable indulgence. A worker who is injured or denied wages cannot be made whole by compounding fees. Penalty without accountability is privilege, not justice.
- Reduced Penalties for Employer Violations
- Why the Working Class Must Resist — Now, Not Later
The struggle is not merely for clauses, but for the nature of labour itself. Will the working class be a stakeholder in democracy or just fuel for corporate profit? These labour codes mark a shift from collective rights to individual vulnerability, from social welfare to market Darwinism.
The trade union movement is not defending the past — it is defending the possibility of a humane future. A future where a worker is not an expendable commodity. Where prosperity is shared, not concentrated. Where rights are not traded for productivity.
Conclusion: Reclaiming the Constitution in the Workplace
In the factory floor and in the gig economy alike, democracy must not stop at the gate. The right to unionise, to bargain, to strike — these are not obstacles to development; they are the foundation of a just society. The new labour codes are attempting to dismantle that foundation brick by brick.
Trade unions must resist with clarity and conviction. Workers must rise not just in protest, but in vision — demanding repeal, demanding reform from the worker’s perspective, demanding that labour is treated not as input, but as human life.
The battle is political, economic, moral — and it has only begun.