Claims on labour codes ensuring minimum wages, social security ‘unsubstantiated’: SKM

New Delhi: The claims that the new labour codes will ensure minimum wages and social security for workers are “unsubstantiated”, Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM) said on Monday, highlighting that 90 per cent of workers are in the unorganised sector and out of the ambit of these codes.

It also slammed the new codes, stating that they negate the right of workers to form trade unions and have imposed stringent conditions on holding a strike.

The SKM also said that it has legalised 12-hour work days from the present 8 hours, which is a universally accepted right of workers, negating Article 42 of the Constitution of India that ensures just and human conditions of work.

“SKM strongly deplores the false corporate propaganda to eulogise the 4 Labour codes which are the most regressive labour reforms since Independence. SKM wholeheartedly supports the united trade unions movement’s determined protest to fight the Labour Codes to restore their rights as well as to attain other basic demands,” the SKM said in a statement.

“The tall claim of the Prime Minister that the labour codes ensure minimum wages and social security to all workers is unsubstantiated. More than 90% of the workers who are in the unorganised sector are out of the ambit of the Labour Codes. The Labour Codes have now put 90% of the remaining workers out of legal protection,” it said.

The SKM pointed out that the Industrial Relations Code exempts units with fewer than 300 workers from the requirement of obtaining prior government permission for lay-offs, retrenchment and closures from the threshold of 100 workers earlier.

“Also, units with fewer than 20 or 40 workers (depending on power use) are exempt from specific provisions of the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions (OSHWC) Code and are not required to register as a factory which were 10 and 20 earlier,” it said.