Amendments in labor laws: Ease of doing biz

The public law fails to address the issues relating to the relationship between & among “Employers, Employees & labor organizations”, which is taken up by Labor law is built to harmonize all angles of the relationship. The laws are designed on various states, the formation and amendments depends on various factors, one major being the economic state of the country. British were primarily involved in shaping the early laws of India.

The factory act was 1^st introduced in 1883, in order to make Indian labor costlier as they offered stiff competition to British textiles in export market. Thus India received the first stipulation of eight hours of work, the abolition of child labor and the restriction of women in night employment and the introduction of overtime wages.

The Factories Act, 1948 (Labor laws enacted by Central Government and enforced by the State Governments), Apprentices Act, 1961 (Labor laws enacted by Central Government and enforced both by Central and State Governments), The Labor Laws (Exemption from furnishing returns and maintaining registers by certain establishments) Act, 1988 (Labor laws enacted by Central Government and enforced both by Central and State Governments)

As a measure taken by the Indian government to improve ease of doing business in India, The amendments to the three acts mentioned above are cleared by the cabinet.  India's labor laws must be aligned with the needs of the 21st century. Below is the doing business(DB) data of India

The outdated apprenticeship law is one reason why India has only 3, 00,000 formal apprentices, while Germany has six million. The key changes proposed in the Apprenticeship Act include dropping the clause that mandates imprisonment of company directors that fail to implement the Apprenticeship Act of 1961 and doing away with an amendment proposed by the UPA mandating employers to absorb at least half of its apprentices in regular jobs besides adding 500 new trades and vocations under the scheme, including skills for services sectors like IT-enabled services.

The proposed changes to the Factories act focuses on five points:

1.  Enhancing the safety of workers and for better amenities on factory premises; doubling the provision of overtime from 50 hours a quarter to 100 hours in some cases and from 75 hours to 125 hours in other work of public interest
2. Increasing the penalty for violation of the Act
3. Relaxing the norms for women to work in some industry segments at night; and reducing to 90 from 240 the number of days an employee needs to work before becoming eligible for benefits like leave with pay.
4. The proposed amendment would do away with a provision for the prosecution of factory owners for petty offenses like not maintaining a clean toilet, for instance.
5. The amendment proposes to reduce the punishments prescribed under such heads to remove the fear of persecution among factory owners

 The proposal to amend Labor Laws (exemption from furnishing returns and maintaining registers by certain establishments) Act, 1988, will allow thousands of small industries to file just one return for compliance with a dozen or more labor laws. Once the amendment is passed, it will exempt small industries with less than 40 workers from the need to comply separately with each of the laws.  A single-page return on compliance will do.