THE existing labour law regime, howsoever limited, is one of the prime targets in Modi’s war on the working class at the instance of the industrialists’ lobby. Various laws have already been amended and various Codes have been in the pipeline for the past three years or so.

Fixed Term Employment: Formalising Enslavement!

Much to the glee of the managements, Modi has unilaterally amended the Industrial Employment (Standing Orders) Central Rules and introduced fixed term employment as a means of employment in all sectors, despite the opposition of the Unions. Legally, now, workers employed in fixed term employments are not entitled for any notice or pay in lieu of termination of his service as a result of non-renewal of contract or employment or on the expiry of such contract period without it being renewed. Workmen engaged in "fixed term" are also disentitled from the protection against retrenchment under the ID Act. Very consciously the amendment has blurred the line between permanent employees and fixed term employees, paving the way for replacing permanent employment with fixed term employment for all practical purposes.

In effect, this amendment permits managements to practice the unfair labour practices of employing a worker with the oblique motive to deprive the worker of her/his statutory right of permanent worker status.

The door is now open for managements to henceforth employ workmen under fixed term contracts, pay them whatever wages it feels, exploit them in every manner possible and throw them out at its pleasure and these workers have no right whatsoever against it. This is accomplished without any major change in accompanied law.

‘Family Labour’: Legal Sanction for the Cruelty of Child Labour

There are 33 million child labourers in India, of whom more than 80 per cent of them are Dalit while the remaining are from the Backward Classes. With increasing poverty, agrarian crisis, migration and other related crisis, child labour is on the increase in the country. Child labour affects the children both mentally and physically and destroys their future. Hence the Child Labour Act, 1996 was enacted.

The Modi government though has enacted the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2016 that effectively sanctions continuance of child labour instead of stopping the same. The Amendment provides that adolescents from the age of 14 to 18 years can be employed in any processes except mining, explosives, and occupations mentioned in the Factory Act. Thus, the existing list of 83 hazardous occupations are done away with legally permitting employment of child labour in chemical mixing units, domestic work cotton farms, battery recycling units, and brick kilns amongst other hazardous industries, which were hitherto prohibited. Secondly, the amendment allows child labour in “family or family enterprises”. A large number of children work in what is claimed to be family enterprises but in highly exploitative intergenerational debt instances, and the Modi Government has effectively granted legal sanction to such exploitative employments.