A Universal Net To Hold All Workers

A dramatic draft moots a single social security system for all workers, formal and informal. Sceptics fume.

- Pragya Singh

For close to six months, some of India’s leading labour unions and experts have been scratching their heads, trying to fathom proposals in a ‘code’ drafted by the government. It’s the Draft Labour Code on Social Security and Welfare they are grappling with. Rel­eased this March for comment, this is the third in a series of four codes the government plans to introduce for a major revamp in workplace-related laws and regulations, mostly by amalgamating and replacing 44 existing ones, many of them archaic. Proposed in the latest code is the notion of ­social security for all.

Union leaders say universal social sec­urity has been one of their demands for decades. They support the government’s intent to ensure minimum wages, pension and health benefits to every worker. What leaves them baffled is why all the existing welfare benefits that trade UNI­ons have managed to secure only for a small section of workers are not being extended by the government to workers in the unorganised sector—not even quantified minimum wages. To top it all, they cannot comprehend how the bur­eaucracy can own up and manage this gigantic transition when the current system is run primarily by the trade unions.

“Our problem with the code is it doesn’t say what social security will be given to workers, but is clear that the government will not pay for unorganised workers’ social security,” says K. Hemalata, president of the CPI(M)-affiliated Centre for Indian Trade Unions. “They call it universal social security, but the code doesn’t say how universal it will be. It says state governments will decide the minimum number of workers in a unit that would make it mandatory for an establishment to comply with social security. If the states set the threshold at, say, 40 workers, 72 per cent of establishments will become exempt.”