Centre working on labour law changes

Working on clubbing all the 44 labour laws into five segments

The Centre might take up changes to the Industrial Disputes Act on the lines of what the Rajasthan government recently did, sources said.

The Union ministry has started work on clubbing all the 44 labour laws into five segments — industrial relations, wages, social security, working conditions and welfare cess.

Sources told Business Standard the views of stakeholders had been taken and changes would be done once these are discussed. The Centre had formed an inter-ministerial group headed by the additional secretary of the labour ministry to review and discusss the rationalisation of the labour laws.

“We have taken stakeholders’ views, which will be discussed at a later stage,” said a labour ministry official, on condition of anonymity. Saying it was a “mammoth” exercise, he added inter-ministerial deliberation was on. “We are working on the thematic codes and examining each law individually. This is a time-consuming process.”

Another official noted these were one of the recommendations of the second National Labour Commission.

The Rajasthan government had recently enacted an amendment to the Industrial Disputes Act, allowing factories employing up to 300 workers to retrench these without taking permission. Earlier, only factories which employed up to 100 workers were allowed to do so. As this law falls under the concurrent list in the Constitution, states can bring in amendments, with Centre’s approval. The Madhya Pradesh government has moved the Centre for like changes.

At the central level, the Act still allows only factories employing up to 100 workers to retrench employees without taking government permission.

Changes to the ID Act have been an old demand of businesses, which often complain of a lack of flexibility in hiring workers. Trade unions have always opposed this move.

Another official said the labour ministry had set up a “reform cell” comprising legal experts and present and former officers to look into this process of simplification of laws.  Law governing industrial relations such as the ID Act, the Trade Unions Act and Industrial Employment Act may be collated into a single Industrial Relations Act. Those related to wages such as the Minimum Wages Act and Payment of Wages Act might be consolidated.