IN the era of liberalization and globalization, workers are fragmented into different sections; there are some permanent workers on high wage islands working in MNCs, big corporate houses and in public sector, while at the same time there are poorly paid, totally unprotected contract and casual workers. This section of permanent workers is progressively declining while workers with not even minimum wages are increasing manifold. Some MNCs have learnt the lesson and found a route to bye-pass even the constricted and convoluted existing labour laws by employing workers in the name of trainees only for 6-8 months period. Every establishment now simultaneously employs permanent workers, contract workers, trainees and apprentices, daily wagers and casual workers with only the permanent workers having any semblance of wage, job and social security. Even this is not guaranteed to these permanent workers especially in sectors without any trade union presence such as the garment sector for instance. Workers are denied job security, wage security and with new laws in place, the barest minimum social security of ESI, PF too. According to new laws, ESI and PF have become optional and the companies are legally free to obtain some namesake insurance and get away with it. The government is coming up with the concept of ‘regular’ employment in place of ‘permanent’ employment which can be taken care of by legalizing ‘Fixed term Employment’.

The Modi-led BJP government is now toying with the idea of getting rid of the mandatory obligations of minimum wage and introduce a concept of ‘Floor Wages’ which is almost equivalent to Rs. 4500 – 5000. Thus, the concept of ‘minimum wages’, which is any way nothing but starvation wages in real sense, is also being replaced by so-called uniform ‘national wages’. or Floor wages. Please note that it is not Rs. 18,000/- as hyped by rumour mongering fake news media. 8 hour work day is denied and the 12 hour work day has already come to stay in most of the private sector companies.

New amendments suggest that contract workers cannot claim ‘Same pay for Same Work’ and rather, they can only claim minimum wages in the state. Hire and Fire is the norm. Contract labour system is being relegated to a second position with a system of apprenticeship and trainees, where payment of minimum wages is not mandatory, is being pushed to overwhelm the employment pattern. To raise number of apprentices from the level of 3 lakhs to 30 lakhs in next three years is the perceived action plan of the government.

Almost 75 percent of the companies are going out of the purview of labour laws with an amendment of the condition to seek government permission for retrenchment and closure from 100 to 300. If you raise any hue and cry against removing the condition of taking permission for retrenchment for companies employing more than 300, then the nomenclature of companies established within 5 years and having operating capital less than Rs. 25 crores, is stated as ‘Start ups’ to keep them out of the ambit of any labour laws.

The procedure for forming trade unions is being made cumbersome and registrations of general workers’ unions are already being denied. Workers’ fundamental ‘Right to Strike’ is also being snatched away in various forms. All these existing laws were enacted only after huge sacrifices and militant strikes by the working class. In such a context, the working class movement today is compelled to take up centuries old demand of 8 hour work day and trade union rights. Building a resistance movement against anti-worker, pro-corporate amendments have become our major task today and we should prepare ourselves to make the working class fight back. The working class has to prepare itself not for its own freedom but also the freedom of all people and for the right to dissent and resist. It is possible only through militant struggles against corporate, communal, manuvadi fascism.

Changes in land acquisition laws to facilitate corporate land grab, and pro-employer reform of labour laws are the foremost agenda of Modi government today. Even well before consolidation of 44 central laws into 4 codes, namely on Wages, Industrial relations, Social Security and on Safety and Service conditions, the codes are becoming redundant with the proposal of 3-Year (2017-18 to 2019-2020) Action Agenda by NITI Aayog. The Action Plan has not minced words in saying that codification of laws into 4 is not sufficient unless they are backed by rapid reforms in labour laws. In effect, now, the major issue is informalisation of the formal and disorganization of the organized. The idea is to make the formal working class sector much more informal so that existing formal labour can be forced to compete with the informal. In the name of rectifying the situation of ‘low productivity and low wage employments’, the government is pushing high wage workers also to low wages.

It is not SEZs (Special Economic Zones) of hundreds of acres that are exempted from labour laws any more. Instead, declare the entire eastern and western coasts of thousands and thousands of acres as CEZs (Coastal Employment Zones), declare industrial and freight corridors and make labour laws redundant for lakhs of workers. This is the proposed strategy of the present Modi-led BJP government.

Liberalisation of Labour market to make it consistent with liberalization of economic policies has been a long pending agenda, yet previous governments were hesitant to touch this. With increasing pressures from IMF and other transnational institutions, imperialist dictates and with the assumption of central power by corporate communal manuvadi fascists, the agenda of market-driven labour conditions and anti-worker reforms has come to the fore. Even MNREGA is being dismantled to allow abundant supply of labour force in cities so that prices of labour power can be depressed to the lowest. Affordable housing and other such schemes are only to provide a cushioning effect to the impending crisis. Abundant supply of labour to depress price of labour, in turn to reap super profits, is the strategy being perceived by the government now.