CHAPTER III The Maze

CHAPTER III

The Maze

INTRODUCTION

‘Labour’ being a concurrent subject under the Constitution of India, a large number of labour laws have been enacted catering to different aspects of labour. These include aspects of occupational health, safety, employment, training of apprentices, fixation, review and revision of minimum wages, mode of payment of wages, payment of compensation to workmen who suffer injuries as a result of accidents or causing death or disablement, bonded labour, contract labour, women labour and child labour, resolution and adjudication of industrial disputes, provision of social security such as provident fund, employees’ state insurance, gratuity, provision for payment of bonus, regulating the working conditions of certain specific categories of workmen such as plantation labour, beedi workers etc. The Planning Commission’s report on the working of Labour Laws has attempted a categorization of the laws:

(a) Labour laws enacted by the Central Government, where the Central Government has the sole responsibility for enforcement

12 enactments ……….

(b) Labour laws enacted by Central Government and enforced both by Central and State Governments

16 enactments

(c) Labour laws enacted by Central Government and enforced by the State Governments

15 enactments

(d) There are also Labour laws enacted and enforced by the various State Governments which apply to respective States.

The Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970 (referred to in this chapter as CLRA) figuring in category (b) above is as comprehensive as it can be, but is not complete in itself. It depends on several other pieces of legislation for a completing the protective net for contract labour; at the same time several other pieces of legislation extend their benefits to the category of ‘contract workers’ within their ambit, generally by including indirect or contractors’ employees in the definition of employees covered by each such enactment.

Awareness of these other laws therefore becomes inescapable.

The general attitude with reference to the entitlements of contract labour (whether it be wages or welfare) is that the contractor is responsible for them and the Principal Employer need not be bothered about these details. This is not true even from a strictly legalistic point of view, and it needs to be remembered that legislators in their own wisdom have placed a rather large share of statutory responsibilities on the Principal Employer. For instance …………

In addition to the attitude mentioned above, the ‘current economic scenario’ – with all its ramifications – has given rise to serious debate about the relevance of labour laws as they stand today. Much of this debate hangs on the widely proclaimed need of the employers to be free to hire and fire as per the fluctuating trends of the market. However …….

Labour legislation has been classified by a recent report by the Planning Commission into ‘four broad areas’ viz.

(a) Employment security and industrial relations;

(b) Income security i.e., wages and other remunerations;

(c) Work security i.e., working conditions, safety and occupational health; and

(d) Social security and labour welfare.

The report also classifies the debate over labour legislation into ‘four major issues’

a)    Rigidity – said to arise out the inability of legal regulations to “consistently balance the welfare needs and protection of rights of workers and enabling economic growth and increasing the level of employment.” (Itself, a matter for debate);

b)    Dualism – defined as the need to contend with the two divisions of the labour market i.e. the organised sector and the vast unorganised sector;

c)    Multiplicity – said to arise out of the concurrent nature of labour legislation with varying priorities / emphases between the Centre and the State; and

d)    Enforcement of and compliance with the laws. (Two distinct issues which should have been separated - but blinkered vision is expedient). 

The report goes on to state that employers find that labour laws place unreasonable restrictions on their need to hire persons and terminate their employment at will; the laws also inhibit rational response of employers to fast changing economic environment…..

Workers’ organisations on the other hand say that the dilution of employment security provision in the law would encourage exploitation…

Much heated discussion arose out of the statements made by Government representatives at several fora regarding the proposed amendment to Chapter V-B of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947. But the major debate centred on the CLRA.

The Report acknowledges the ‘unintended consequence’ of multiple legislations i.e. the absence of common definitions even of the basic categories like that of workmen, employee, industry and enterprise – which has led to conflicting judicial and administrative interpretations that have further complicated the employment relations scenario with their own implications for compliance and enforcement. The issue of multiplicity and complexity therefore, needs immediate tackling. In this context, it is interesting to note that the Government of Tamil Nadu on the 14^th of November 2003 introduced a scheme…..

Another set of difficulties identified by the Report is that (a) the diversity of economic structure, (b) the pattern of economic growth and ………… The agenda of labour reforms must move away from the contentious debate on “deregulation” and instead be set towards fulfilling the goal of enabling quality employment growth.

So while the intellectuals deliberate over the niceties of legislated welfare, it is necessary that the existing laws be implemented in their true spirit. Of course it is neither practical nor necessary to deal with the entire spectrum of labour laws that we have in India. We will restrict ourselves to labour legislation that seeks to provide protection to contract labour along with other workmen.

The enactments that we will deal with are as follows (arranged alphabetically): 20 enactments….

There are several other enactments that may also be connected in one way or another but are excluded from this chapter because they are specific to particular trades, avocations or calling, like the Acts for workers in mines of various kinds, dock workers, beedi workers, working journalists, plantation labour, sales promotion employees, merchant shipping and cinema workers or they are related purely to social reform such as Bonded Labour, etc.

In this chapter, we establish the relationship between the CLRA and the other Acts with the ultimate objective of ensuring that the contract labour is provided the protection intended by the lawmakers. The Acts referred to above are dealt with only to the extent they are related to Contract Labour. The sections that follow are therefore not to be taken as analyses of the said enactments in their entirety but only those aspects that are relevant to Contract Labour and the CLRA.