”India’s four new Labour Codes—Wages, Social Security, Occupational Safety & Health (OSHW), and Industrial Relations—mark a transformative shift toward simplification, uniformity, and expanded worker protection. The Codes consolidate 29 earlier labour laws into a streamlined, technology-enabled framework, redefining key concepts such as wages, employee, employer, and appropriate government, and ensuring consistency across all labour legislation.
The Code on Wages now provides a uniform definition of wages, introduces floor wages, expands minimum wage coverage to all employees, and removes the earlier wage threshold for the Payment of Wages Act. Bonus eligibility has been broadened and timelines for wage payment tightened.
The Social Security Code integrates nine major social welfare laws and extends social protection to gig workers, platform workers, and the unorganised sector. It strengthens EPF and ESIC coverage, allows voluntary opt-ins, and introduces unified registration, joint employer liability, and modernised compliance through inspector-cum-facilitators. Maternity, gratuity, disability compensation, and BOCW welfare provisions see significant expansion.
The OSHW Code harmonises safety and working condition standards across sectors, updates definitions, raises thresholds for applicability, regulates contract labour—especially in core activities—and mandates facilities such as crèches, health checks, and improved working hour norms.
The Industrial Relations Code modernises trade union recognition, simplifies standing orders, reforms dispute-resolution mechanisms, and tightens conditions around strikes and lockouts.
Collectively, the Codes aim to reduce compliance burdens, enhance worker welfare, and create a more predictable, business-friendly labour framework.
CREDITS: The text has been derived out of CITI India official id PDF File. The content has not been edited or reviewed by us.
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