On November 21, the Union government issued notifications bringing into force four Labour Codes that had been passed between 2019 and 2021: the Code on Wages, 2019; the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code (OSH Code), 2020; the Social Security Code, 2020; and the Industrial Relations (IR) Code, 2020. The four Labour Codes, presented as anti-colonial “labour reform”, essentially constitute a reorientation of the state’s role in mediating class relations in the country. That Corporate India has largely hailed the Labour Codes indicates whose interests they serve. Trade unions have taken this as an attack on the working class, and indications are that the coming months will see a concerted challenge on the streets.

The very passing of these codes in Parliament constituted an undemocratic process: three of the four Bills were passed without debate in 2020 on a day when Parliament was in turmoil over the passing of farm laws. Trade unions have consistently resisted this codification process and have held four nationwide strikes. Yet, ignoring all objections, the government has issued notifications to implement the codes.

The codes have a serious impact on the rights of workers, although the Union government, ably supported by the mainstream media, claims they are worker-friendly. It is imperative to examine the actual substance of the Labour Codes to understand their true impact on the working class, in particular, and the socio-economic structure of society at large. Simply put, the codes grant employers greater freedom while curtailing even the most basic rights of workers, with the harshest consequences borne by the most marginalised workers.

A fundamental change that the implementation of the new codes brings is the pushing out of workers from the ambit of law. Labour laws generally prescribe a worker threshold for their applicability, meaning that the laws apply only to those establishments that employ a certain number of workers. The new codes raise the threshold, thus keeping out a greater number of workers from the purview of the law.

The Factories Act, 1948, enacted to ensure basic health, safety, welfare facilities, decent working hours, and leave for workers in factories, set a threshold of 10 workers for its applicability to establishments operating with power, and 20 workers for those without power. The OSH Code raises the threshold to 20 for establishments functioning with power and 40 for those functioning without power.

According to the Annual Survey of Industries 2022–23 (published by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation), 43.2 per cent of factories employ fewer than 20 people; workers in these establishments will now be denied the protection of this law.

The relationship between workers and the management is inherently unequal. Leaving service conditions entirely to the employer’s discretion opens the door to arbitrary and discriminatory employment practices, with workmen subject to unilateral terms. The Industrial Employment (Standing Orders) Act, 1946, enacted to address this issue, mandated that establishments employing 100 or more workers must frame standing orders governing conditions of service; these rules had to be certified by State authorities after hearing the workmen, thus ensuring that the terms were fair and reasonable. The IR Code raises the threshold to 300 workers. This means that workers in establishments with fewer than 300 workers are pushed into a legal vacuum, leaving their service conditions entirely at the employer’s mercy and discretion.

The IR Code makes another shift vis-a-vis the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947. Under the 1947 Act, establishments employing 100 or more workmen were required to obtain government permission before effecting any lay-off, retrenchment, or closure, ensuring public scrutiny over decisions that affect livelihoods and job security of workers.

The code raises this threshold from 100 to 300 workmen. Employers in units employing fewer than 300 workmen can now lay off, retrench, or shut down operations without any prior approval. In effect, it grants them unchecked power to terminate employment and expose workers to sudden and arbitrary loss of livelihood.

The Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970, was enacted to protect workers in the exploitative contract labour system by prescribing its abolition under certain conditions and mandating basic safeguards such as timely payment of wages, provision of essential amenities, liability of the principal employer. This Act applied to all establishments employing 20 or more workers. The OSH Code raises this threshold to 50 workers.

The Labour Codes, by raising the threshold for enjoyment of rights and entitlements under them, strip workers of hard-won rights and narrow the scope of regulation, pushing lakhs of workplaces outside legal regulation.

The working conditions and enforcement of labour laws in any establishment is contingent on workers’ organisation and militancy, a product of the eternal conflict between capital and labour. This explains why, even today, workers who are organised enjoy comparatively greater security, while those in the unorganised (rather, consciously disorganised) sector, where workers are prevented from organising, are subject to extreme exploitation.

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The right to form trade unions is protected by the freedom of association guaranteed under Article 19 of the Constitution. The Trade Unions Act, 1926, which gave statutory expression to this right, has now been replaced by the IR Code, which empowers the Registrar to withdraw or cancel the registration of a trade union “on the information received by him” regarding an alleged contravention of the code. While power of cancellation existed under the Trade Unions Act, the IR Code’s scope is far wider as it now governs strikes and several other aspects of industrial relations. This significantly expands the Registrar’s discretion and exposes trade unions to arbitrary interference.

Under the Trade Unions Act, office-bearers and members of registered trade unions enjoyed statutory immunity from civil proceedings and criminal prosecution under Section 120B(2) of the Indian Penal Code, for actions taken in furtherance of legitimate union objectives. This protection is retained in Section 17 of the IR Code but is rendered meaningless by the code’s expanded power of deregistration. Once a union’s registration is cancelled, its members lose immunity. The threat of cancellation thus operates as a weapon to intimidate unions and create a climate of fear that undermines the freedom of association.

The Labour Codes also attack the right to strike, an essential component of collective bargaining. For workers, whose only bargaining power lies in their labour, the withdrawal of labour is often the sole means to be heard in the face of unequal power relations. In his opposition to the Industrial Disputes Bill in 1938, B.R. Ambedkar said: “A strike is simply another name for the right to freedom; it is nothing else than the right to the freedom of one’s services on any terms that one wants to obtain. And once you concede the right to freedom, you necessarily concede the right to strike.”

The attack on the right to strike under the IR Code is twofold. The code effectively makes strikes illegal through procedural traps. Under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, prior notice of strike was required only in public utility services. The IR Code expands this by mandating a 14-day advance notice for a strike in every establishment. The issuance of such notice triggers conciliation proceedings, and once conciliation is under way, strikes are prohibited. This new regime effectively acts as a prohibition on strikes, hollowing out the right to collective bargaining.

Additionally, the code escalates penalties. Under the Industrial Disputes Act, the penalty for an illegal strike was imprisonment up to one month or a fine of Rs.50. The IR Code increases this to a minimum fine of Rs.1,000 going up to Rs.10,000, or imprisonment, or both.

The effect is an assault on collective action and the silencing of working-class actions.

Article 39(d) of Constitution mandates that the state shall direct policy towards securing equal pay for equal work for both men and women. This constitutional provision was strengthened in the Equal Remuneration Act, 1976, which prohibited discrimination in wages on the basis of sex. The Code on Wages has effectively dismantled this. While on the face of it, equal wages are mandated, the devil lies in the details. The code redefines wages to exclude key components, including various allowances, allowing employers to structure wages in a way that appears compliant but can potentially perpetuate gender-based discrimination. In a labour market where women already face discrimination, this redefinition risks legitimising indirect wage discrimination, directly contravening the guarantee of equality.

The second major setback to women workers’ rights is the reduction in maternity benefits. The Maternity Benefits Act, 1961, is now amalgamated in the Social Security Code, which narrows the definition of “wages” to exclude various allowances. In practice, employers split wages across multiple heads to avoid liabilities. By excluding these components, the code legitimises such avoidance; this will result in women workers receiving lower maternity benefits.

The introduction of night shift for women, hitherto prohibited under the Factories Act, is being heralded as a gain for women’s freedom. In reality, it offers employers greater freedom to extract labour from women under conditions that are inherently unsafe and unequal. Although the provision requires the “consent” of the woman worker, such consent is illusory in a workplace marked by stark power imbalances. Studies have shown that night-shift work exposes workers to serious risks, affects workers’ health and overall well-being, while adding to emotional and psychological stress. Rather than regulating night shifts to protect all workers, the code now legitimises the use of this oppressive practice against women.

As far back as 1990, the Supreme Court described (Sankar Mukherjee v. Union of India 1990 [Supp] SCC 668) the contract labour system as “an improved version of bonded labour”. Yet, despite the enactment of the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970, contractual employment has only expanded over the years, particularly as part of the neoliberal restructuring of the workforce.

Contract labour is overwhelmingly concentrated in forms of work labelled as “unskilled” or “menial”, categories that are deeply intertwined with caste. Occupations such as sanitation, housekeeping, gardening, and similar forms of labour have historically been caste-ordained and continue to be performed almost entirely by Dalits and other marginalised communities.

The contract labour system is marked by non-payment of minimum wages, delays in wage payments, and absence of social security. Such precarious working conditions trap workers in poverty and have intergenerational consequences, forcing children out of school and into the same caste-ordained occupations.

Rather than ending this exploitative system, the labour codes legitimise them. The OSH Code, which replaces the 1970 Act, prohibits employment of contract labour in core activities only in name; the very definition of “core activity” reeks of casteist and classist tendencies and excludes from prohibition precisely those forms of work where contract labour is most pervasive and exploitative. Sanitation work, watch and ward services, canteen and catering services, loading and unloading operations, housekeeping and laundry services, gardening and maintenance of lawns, transport and ambulance services, construction and maintenance work—all are specifically excluded from the definition of core work. By excluding these activities from the definition of core work, the OSH Code institutionalises this exploitative form of bonded labour. Instead of protecting these workers who have been continually marginalised, the code gives legitimacy to a system that has historically been designed to exploit them, embedding inequality and discrimination into the very structure of the law.

In States and Minorities, Ambedkar stressed the necessity of state intervention to prevent economic exploitation, warning that the absence of regulation would not produce freedom but lead, instead, to the “dictatorship of the private employer”. The Labour Codes, in that sense, represent the abdication by the state of any responsibility towards workers.

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Indeed, Manusmriti, which Ambedkar burnt, is invoked in the draft Shram Shakti Niti 2025 (National Labour and Employment Policy), which characterises labour as a “sacred and moral duty”. The Labour Codes, on the one hand, enable what Ambedkar described as the “dictatorship of the private employer” and, on the other, deepen poverty and reinforce caste and gender inequalities.

The Labour Codes must be understood within the broader effort to dismantle constitutional rights, one that seeks to recast exploitation as exercise of the employer’s rights and resistance by workers as criminal and a failure of duty. The way forward in this class war is to demand not only status quo ante but a labour law regime that guarantees jobs, wages, and social security to all in the true sense.

Maitreyi Krishnan is All India Central Council of Trade Unions (AICCTU) State Secretary, Karnataka.