INDIA LABOR & EMPLOYMENT LAWS OVERHAUL

With a more pragmatic approach along with an endeavor to better India’s ease of doing business position, the Codes aim to achieve much-needed reforms to bring the labor laws of India in tune with the current requirements of employer - employee relationship, compliance standards, rendering the labor law regime a more workable and less cumbersome

- Harsimran Singh

Three Codes, having received assent from the Hon’ble President on September 28, 20201, mark the initiation of a new era in the regime of labor & employment laws of India. The said Codes, namely:

1. The Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 (“OSHWC Code”),

2. The Code on Social Security, 2020 (“SS Code”), and

3. The Industrial Relations Code, 2020 (“IR Code”)

shall revamp numerous existing laws in a more consolidated-comprehensive-collated form; and essentially aim not only to further benefit the employees/ workers but also to titivate India’s ease of doing business image at large by introducing less cumbersome compliance mechanism(s). The said Codes include the necessary amendments resulting out of the current pandemic-times keeping in view the unprecedented situations faced by employees, employers and above all the relevant statutory authorities.

The present article provides an overview of the key highlights that each of the said Codes shall introduce respectively so as to bring about a complete overhaul in the Indian labor & employment laws domain.

The introduction of the above stated three Codes was set into motion last year with the introduction of the Code on Wages 2019 or the Wage Code which endeavors to consolidate the provisions of four labor laws (namely the Equal Remuneration Act, 1976; the Minimum Wages Act, 1948; the Payment of Wages Act, 1936; and the Payment of Bonus Act, 1965) concerning wage and bonus payments and makes universal the provisions for minimum wages and timely payment of wages for all workers in India.

The OSHWC Code