Labour codes must adjust society's moral compass

The implementation frame has to be both morally serious and administratively plausible

- Harsh Sharma

After decades of contentious debates and false starts, labour-law reforms have finally entered the decisive implementation phase.

The four codes — on Wages, Social Security, Industrial Relation, and Occupational Safety, Health, and Working Conditions — were rolled out in November 2025, and the Centre notified final rules in May 2026. However, since labour is a Concurrent List subject and many states continue to dither, universal implementation will take time because state-level rule-making and building of compliance architecture remain at different stages of preparedness. At the same time, trade unions’ opposition has been visible though not effective in stalling implementation. Among big corporates, the transition is already visible, in the cost-provisioning being made in the account books. But the real test will be whether universal labour rights is delivered beyond large public sector units and big corporates.

The new labour codes are taking effect at a moment when newer forms of quasi-employment contracts are increasingly substituting, or uneasily coexisting with, older structures of the more sharply defined formal and informal work. As the codes consolidate old labour laws and modernise the compliance architecture, the question is: Whom do the labour laws in India protect, and at whose cost?

For decades, the labour laws’ structure remained rooted in mid-20th-century statutes even as the economy moved from State-led industrialisation to liberalisation, globalisation, services dominance, platform work and, now, ‘AI-mediated labour’. What changed most, for long stretches, was the way courts, governments and industry worked around the basic legal constructs. Till now, substantial reform has come only through interpretation, partial amendment, under-enforcement, administrative workaround, and labour-market practices.