Budget 2024: Will Budget hint at need for labour codes to help the workers?
Sweeping technological advancements are creating a sea change in today’s regulatory environment. The pace of development of today’s technological innovations and the scope of the transformations they induce is indeed unprecedented. At times, regulatory frameworks are not agile enough to accommodate the fast pace of innovation and, as a consequence, existing rules become outdated and no longer relevant. Lack of knowledge of how innovations will affect markets and societies can make it hard for governments to keep pace in a way that avoids reducing the potential benefits of innovation, while also protecting the legitimate interests of all stakeholders.
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Budget 2024 : Will the Budget foster the need for labour codes to boost the morale of the workers !
India’s Finance Minister is likely to ring in the various positives which the economy has been a witness to, at the upcoming Budget next week. It will include the sharp over-8 percent spike in GDP growth for FY24, year-on-year capex growth, a boost to digital payments and record foreign exchange reserves.
Abheek Barua, chief economist at HDFC Bank, says India has structural problems to deal with. “We are not looking at the average labour productivity for the economy but getting carried away by pockets of skill and getting industries to respond to the availability of skill as we saw in the information technology sector. We need to focus on traditionally labour-intensive sectors,” he tells Forbes India.
The problems in the labour market remains an issue, where we need a unified and accepted labour code to be adopted nationwide
Recently, Labour Secretary Sumita Dawra chaired a virtual meeting with labour secretaries and labour commissioners of all 36 states and union territories to evaluate the readiness of all states to roll-out the code and to assess the quality of pre-published draft rules by the states.
States vs Centre
However, the rolling out of the labour codes has been faced with mounting criticism. Eight states – Meghalaya, Nagaland, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Lakshadweep, Sikkim, Andaman & Nicobar Islands and NCT of Delhi – have not, so far, pre published draft rules under one or more labour codes.
Unions against labour codes
In a pre-budget consultation meeting with union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, trade unions on Monday demanded restoration of the Old Pension Scheme and scrapping of the four labour codes.
Induprakash Menon, national president, Trade Union Co-ordination Centre (TUCC), said that they have recommended increasing minimum wages to Rs 26,000 per month.
“All four labour codes enacted must be repealed and scrapped. The 29 labour statutes should be restored, and minimum wages should not be less than Rs 26,000 per month with indexation fixed in line with the consensus recommendation of the Indian Labour Conference,” he said.
