Issues of workers’ safety
Relevance: G.S paper II: Polity: Governance: Government schemes and their implementation & Sociology: Rural and Agrarian transformation in India: Problems of rural labour, bondage, migration.
Context
- The “accident” at the 500 megawatts thermal power plant operated by the National
Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) in Unchahar, Raebareli district
- exposed the callous disregard for worker safety and the violation of labour laws that is virtually a norm in India.
Status of labour laws implementation in formal sector
- This tragedy has not occurred in an unregulated factory, or a small unit operating outside regulatory laws. This was a thermal power plant run by the NTPC, India’s largest power utility that manages 48 thermal power stations.
- Majority of the workers affected were migrant contract workers, brought to the unit by contractors to whom jobs had been subcontracted.
- This is a ploy used by many large industrial units.
- It helps employers minimise their liabilities to a smaller number of permanent workers who are covered under labour laws, while much of the work, often the more hazardous tasks, are farmed out to contractors who employ casual workers, often on daily wages.
- These workers have no health insurance in the event of accidents or exposure to hazards.
- This murky underbelly of the formal sector in India stands exposed when such accidents take place.
Labour laws amendments
- Proposed amendments to the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970, the Factories Act, 1948, and the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947.
- Furthermore, there are proposals to dilute laws governing contract labour that will facilitate the use of casual labour for the more hazardous jobs, as in Unchahar.
- Government has introduced in the Lok Sabha ‘The Code on Wages’ Bill to consolidate and amend the laws relating to wages and bonus which also seeks to empower the Centre to fix a “universal minimum wage” aimed to benefit over 40 crore unorganised sector workers.
- The bill seeks to amalgamate four laws — Payment of Wages Act 1936, Minimum
Wages Act 1948, Payment of Bonus Act 1965 and Equal Remuneration Act 1976 SC judgement on Contract Labour
The landmark Asiad case (Peoples Union for Democratic Rights v Union of India and Others, 1982) in which the Supreme Court held the government responsible for contract workers as the principal employer.
Government violating its mandate
- This government has also brought in rules restricting labour inspections, thereby violating Article 81 of the International Labour Organization (ILO) to which India is a signatory.
- It has introduced the Shram Suvidha Portal that permits employers to “self-certify” compliance to 16 central labour laws. Such “self-certification” has been proved to be a fraud in compliance with environmental laws.
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