New labor codes, enacted last month amidst strong objections from the majority of unions, are widely seen as an assault on the basic rights of the working classes won through generations of struggle.
Indian opposition parties and their members of parliament staged a joint protest in front of the parliament building on Wednesday, December 3, demanding the immediate withdrawal of the four labor codes formally enacted last month.
Elected members of the parliament from the Indian National Congress (INC), Samajwadi Party, and left parties gathered outside the main entry of the Indian Parliament in Delhi carrying banners and shouting slogans against the new codes.
The four new labor codes were “rammed” through the parliament five years ago and recently “unilaterally notified”, claimed M A Baby, general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in a post on X.
Baby refuted the government’s claims that the codes were introduced to facilitate the “ease of doing business”, claiming they were introduced to promote the “ease of exploitation” of workers and are “yet another proof of the new fascist drive” of the extreme right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government led by Narendra Modi.
The four new codes are the Code on Wages, 2019, the Industrial Relations Code, 2020, the Code on Social Security, 2020, and the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020. They were adopted by the parliament in 2020 without much discussion with the stakeholders and in the absence of the opposition. They were kept in abeyance until November 21 when they were suddenly enacted in a surprising move.
The government has claimed the new labor codes were introduced to simplify the existing laws and to provide universal benefits to all the workers in the country. However, the Central Trade Unions (CTUs), a joint platform of all major trade unions in the country have already rejected the codes, calling them a “deceptive fraud committed against the working people of the nation” and staging a nationwide protest on November 26.
Aniyan P V, Delhi state secretary of the Center for Indian Trade Unions (CITU), spoke to Peoples Dispatch about the codes and why they have sparked such broad-based mass opposition.
thelastaxolotl in labour
Indian unions claim labor codes seek to “ease exploitation” in the name of business
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/12/07/indian-unions-claim-labor-codes-seek-to-ease-exploitation-in-the-name-of-business/cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/12185