New Delhi: The Uttar Pradesh government Wednesday approved an ordinance exempting all establishments, factories, and businesses from the purview of most labour laws for three years.

The Uttar Pradesh Temporary Exemption from Certain Labour Laws Ordinance, 2020, only retains the Bonded Labour Act, 1976, Employee Compensation Act, 1923, and Building and Other Construction Workers’ Act, 1996.

Reports say laws pertaining to women and children, like the Maternity Act, Equal Remuneration Act, Child Labour Act, and Section 5 of the Payment of Wages Act, which states that wages of a person earning less than Rs 15,000 a month cannot be deducted, are also being retained.

Some of the laws that would no longer apply include the Minimum Wages Act, Trade Unions Act, Industrial Disputes Act, Factories Act, Contract Labour Act, Payment of Bonus Act, Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act, Working Journalists Act, Employees’ Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act.

The ordinance has been sent for approval to the central government, since labour is on the concurrent list of subjects.

Arguments in favour of the ordinance have largely been focussed on the coverage of these labour laws, with supporters pointing out that these protections were available to only 10 per cent of the national labour force.

However, ThePrint spoke to experts on the subject, who felt that the move is “atrocious” and “draconian”, pointing out fallacies in the justification for the ordinance.

‘90% labourers don’t have protections’

Shruti Rajagopalan, senior research fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, says the ordinance is a step in the right direction, and that “this should have been done decades ago, even without Covid”.

Rajagopalan, however, tweeted that these laws, “while well intentioned, have had terrible unintended consequences of creating a monstrous unorganised sector”. She explained that Indian regulations make labour “more costly”.

“So either firms switch to capital, or don’t hire labour and instead ‘contract out’ using middlemen to supply workers without formal contracts. This is not just to avoid paying above market wages, but also to avoid compliance costs,” she wrote.

Rajagopalan pointed out that 90 per cent of India’s labourers did not have the legal protections in the first place. “(The laws) only served unionised labour, a small fraction of Indians in the formal sector, labour inspectors, middlemen, and champagne socialists. The cost of keeping this small contingent in business has left 90 per cent in the informal sector, totally unregulated, and with no protection,” she stated.

‘All permanent employees will be terminated’

However, Delhi-based labour lawyer Sanjoy Ghose explained that given the size of the population, even the formal sector is made up of several lakh workers, who will be affected by the ordinance.

Ghose told ThePrint that the arguments referring to unorganised and organised workers are “bogus”, because Parliament had passed the Unorganised Workers’ Social Security Act in 2008. The stated objective of the Act was “to provide for the social security and welfare of the unorganised workers and all matters connected with it”.

“If they wanted to protect the unorganised workers, the legislation was there, but till date, no state has implemented it,” Ghose said.

As for the laws being imperfect, he asked: “Doesn’t police misuse the penal code? Don’t women and men misuse matrimonial law provisions? Will you then say that for three years, there should be no penal code or matrimonial law?”

The ordinance would result in the termination of all permanent employees the moment it receives the President’s nod, and they would be replaced with contract workers, Ghose said, adding that the legislation is “absolutely atrocious” and that “this is a very naive and simplistic way of looking at such a complex issue like post-pandemic industrial relations”.

Ghose also highlighted the issue of gratuity payments. “A person who has worked for 30 years and knows that he will get this money to build his house post-retirement… just because is retiring now during the pandemic, he would not get any gratuity? Those retiring over the next three years will not get any gratuity?” he asked.

Disregard of workers’ rights

Another Delhi-based lawyer Urvi Mohan also felt that while trying to generate more employment and revive the suffering economy, “the UP government has acted in complete disregard to the rights of the various categories of workers who were enjoying the benefits of labour laws”.

Mohan said the ordinance has “arbitrarily and absolutely unfairly done away with the very basic rights of all those covered by labour laws”.

She said the state government could have instead “resorted to adopting certain features of the consolidated labour code, if it wanted to balance the interests of employers vs employees/workmen”.

Mohan added: “They chose this path that takes away even the rights of workmen with respect to inter alia unfair terminations/cessations of employment, hygienic and safe working conditions, agitating their rights through trade unions etc., which is absolutely draconian.”

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