2ND part of my article- LABOUR LAWS AMENDEMENT. The Madhya Pradesh cabinet approved amendments to as many as 20 labour laws. Of these, 17 are central government laws and three state laws. “All the central labour laws will be forwarded to the President of India for his assent,” said K C Gupta, labour commissioner. In an important amendment to the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, the cabinet gave its assent to the retrenchment of workers, lay-offs and the easy closure of units. Lay-offs, retrenchments and even closures will not require any permission. This is akin to a ‘hire-and-fire’ policy. The amendment will be applicable only if the industrial establishment has up to 300 workers. Earlier, it was applicable to industrial units having at least 100 workers, employed on an average per working day for the preceding 12 months. The cabinet claimed to have approved this amendment to offer an option to employers to retrench unproductive and inefficient workers. The UP govt has initiated the move. The forerunner was Rajasthan Government. According to the changes in the Industrial Disputes Act, by Rajasthan government, permission would not be required for retrenchment of up to 300 workers. The Act, as it stands now, allows retrenchment of up to only 100 workers. The Rajasthan Cabinet has also introduced a three-year time limit for raising disputes and increased the percentage of workers needed for registration as a representative union from 15 per cent to 30 per cent. As far as the Contract Labour Act is concerned, the amendments raise the applicability of the Act to companies with more than 50 workers from the current 20. In the Factories Act, currently applicable to premises with more than 10 workers with power and 20 without power, the amendments raise these numbers to 20 and 40, respectively. We must not forget that the Gujarat under Chief Minister ship of Modi was pioneer in amending labour laws. The amended’ the Industrial Disputes Act’ stands in its application in the state’s special economic zones (SEZs), allowing lay-offs of “redundant workers” in all units, without the requirement of seeking government permission. The World Bank put it in 2008: “India’s labour regulations – among the most restrictive and complex in the world – have constrained the growth of the formal manufacturing sector where these laws have their widest application... Given the country’s momentum of growth, the window of opportunity must not be lost for improving job prospects for the 80 million new entrants who are expected to join the work force over the next decade.” The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the centre has now initiated a “fresh review” of the country’s labour laws in order to tailor them to the requirements of the National Manufacturing Policy (NMP) unveiled by the previous Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government in 2011. The Union cabinet on 30th July 2014 approved amendments to three archaic labour laws aimed at easing regulations which have acted as an obstacle to faster growth and hurt employee interests. India’s NMP aims at increasing the share of the manufacturing sector in the gross domestic product (GDP) from 15%-16% to 25% by 2022 and creating 100 million additional jobs by that year through the setting up of National Investment and Manufacturing Zones (NIMZs). The latter are conceived of as industrial clusters in the form of “integrated industrial townships with the state-of-the-art infrastructure” developed through the public-private partnership mode. The NMP basically is after the Nobel Prize-winning economist, W Arthur Lewis) model of “Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour The name of the game is international subcontracting, where transnational corporations, either producers or retailers, arrange to use Indian firms to manufacture products, components and services. The transnational producer/retailer controls the final marketing and provides technological and managerial assistance to the Indian subcontractor. The whole operation is however predicated upon the super-exploitation of labour at the subcontractor’s sweatshop in labour-intensive manufacturing industries, for which labour protection has to be dismantled. [3] [To be continued]
Posted on: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 04:01:10 +0000
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