{"id":9168,"date":"2020-07-24T18:23:28","date_gmt":"2020-07-24T12:53:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/?p=9168"},"modified":"2023-04-07T16:29:52","modified_gmt":"2023-04-07T10:59:52","slug":"issues-of-workers-safety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/issues-of-workers-safety\/","title":{"rendered":"Issues of workers\u2019 safety"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1>Issues of workers\u2019 safety<\/h1>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff; background-color: #ffff00;\"><strong>Relevance: G.S paper II: Polity: Governance:\u00a0Government schemes and their implementation &amp; Sociology:\u00a0Rural and Agrarian transformation in India:\u00a0Problems of rural labour, bondage, migration.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Context<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The \u201caccident\u201d at the 500 megawatts thermal power plant operated by the National<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) in Unchahar, Raebareli district<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>exposed the callous disregard for worker safety and the violation of labour laws that is virtually a norm in India.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/assets-api.kathmandupost.com\/thumb.php?src=https:\/\/assets-cdn.kathmandupost.com\/uploads\/source\/news\/2018\/miscellaneous\/ambitious-24112018072453.jpg&amp;w=900&amp;height=601\" alt=\"Ambitious social security scheme ready for private sector workers\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Status of labour laws implementation in formal sector<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>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\u2019s largest power utility that manages 48 thermal power stations.<\/li>\n<li>Majority of the workers affected were migrant contract workers, brought to the unit by contractors to whom jobs had been subcontracted.<\/li>\n<li>This is a ploy used by many large industrial units.<\/li>\n<li>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.<\/li>\n<li>These workers have no health insurance in the event of accidents or exposure to hazards.<\/li>\n<li>This murky underbelly of the formal sector in India stands exposed when such accidents take place.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Labour laws amendments<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Proposed amendments to the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970, the Factories Act, 1948, and the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947.<\/li>\n<li>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.<\/li>\n<li>Government has introduced in the Lok Sabha \u2018The Code on Wages\u2019 Bill to consolidate and amend the laws relating to wages and bonus which also seeks to empower the Centre to fix a \u201cuniversal minimum wage\u201d aimed to benefit over 40 crore unorganised sector workers.<\/li>\n<li>The bill seeks to amalgamate four laws \u2014 Payment of Wages Act 1936, Minimum<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Wages Act 1948, Payment of Bonus Act 1965 and Equal Remuneration Act 1976 SC judgement on Contract Labour<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/bsmedia.business-standard.com\/_media\/bs\/img\/article\/2019-09\/20\/full\/1568921802-2244.jpg\" alt=\"Centre gets responses to draft Social Security Code \u2013 Civilsdaily\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Government violating its mandate<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>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.<\/li>\n<li>It has introduced the Shram Suvidha Portal that permits employers to \u201cself-certify\u201d compliance to 16 central labour laws. Such \u201cself-certification\u201d has been proved to be a fraud in compliance with environmental laws.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>For more such notes, Articles, News &amp; Views Join our Telegram Channel.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Telegram Link\" href=\"https:\/\/t.me\/triumphias\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong>https:\/\/t.me\/triumphias<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>Click the link below to see the details about the UPSC \u2013Civils courses offered by Triumph IAS.<\/strong> <\/span><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" title=\"Courses available\" href=\"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/pages-all-courses.php\">https:\/\/triumphias.com\/pages-all-courses.php<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Issues of workers\u2019 safety Relevance: G.S paper II: Polity: Governance:\u00a0Government schemes and their implementation &amp; Sociology:\u00a0Rural and Agrarian transformation in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8390,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,114,116],"tags":[2235,2673,2675,2674,2679,2267,2245,2676,2678,1391,2677,392,390,2672],"class_list":["post-9168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general-studies-ii","category-sociology-optional","category-sociology-optional-paper-ii","tag-civil-services","tag-contract-labour","tag-government-schemes","tag-industrial-accidents","tag-international-labour-organization","tag-labour-laws","tag-migrant-workers","tag-national-thermal-power-corporation","tag-supreme-court","tag-triumph-ias","tag-unchahar","tag-union-public-service-commission-upsc","tag-upsc","tag-worker-safety"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9168"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13710,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9168\/revisions\/13710"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}