(View: More than five years after Parliament approved them, India’s four labour codes are now in force from 21 November. The Codes on Wages, Social Security, Industrial Relations, and Occupational Safety & Health replace 29 laws, but some labour rights activists say the reforms erode rights in the name of ease.)
In a seafood plant on Odisha’s neglected coast, Anam Dalai raises her thumb—split, swollen, and barely recognisable. She earns Rs 90 for peeling a 50–70 kg box of fish. Four boxes bring in Rs 360, still below the state’s minimum wage. Gloves slow the work, so she peels barehanded until infection takes over.
Then the humiliation compounds. Biometric scanners at ration shops and banks reject her disfigured print. No grain. No cash. No day off.
The factory shrugs; Anam isn’t a “regular” worker. Just another invisible cog.
Her story encapsulates the reality of nearly 90 percent of India’s 565 million workers trapped in informal, precarious labour. And today, that precarity is being codified—literally.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led federal government’s four new Labour Codes are being marketed as “simplification,” promise flexibility and ease of doing business. What they actually deliver is a state-backed blueprint for profit over people, one that trades Ambedkar’s labour protections for corporate convenience.
A Legacy Undone
BR Ambedkar understood what destitution meant. As Labour Member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council in the 1940s, he pushed the Factories Act, maternity benefits, and constitutional directives for living wages and equal pay. He anchored India’s labour laws in dignity.
Today, that architecture is being quietly dismantled.
At a time when unemployment is at 7.5 percent (CMIE, October 2025) and India leads the world with 11 million people in modern slavery, the Codes do not bring workers into the fold. They push them further out.
Under Ambedkar’s Industrial Disputes Act, factories with 100 workers needed government approval to retrench or close. It was a lifeline for vulnerable workers; a brake on arbitrary dismissal. The new Industrial Relations Code removes that brake entirely. Factories with up to 300 workers can now fire, retrench, or shut down without state oversight. The fallout is immediate and brutal.
Jithendar Singh, a Dalit migrant from Bihar, returned to a Maharashtra steel forge after a family tragedy—only to find that a contractor had vanished with his Rs 9,000 dues. He recovered part of it only because a union contact quietly intervened. Without that whisper, he would join the ocean of uncounted losses.
Workers like Sagar Singh and Sikander Amitabh, migrant workers from Uttar Pradesh working in a steel factory in Maharashtra, explain the new reality without hesitation: “Take a month off to deal with a crisis, and you return as a ‘fresh hire.’ Everything resets.”
The context is, even if they take a leave for nearly one month, their entry cards will be blocked and upon rejoining they will be considered as fresh recruits which will strip off their social security benefits like provident fund and others.
Silencing India’s Shopfloor Democracy
If job security was Ambedkar’s shield, collective bargaining was his sword.
But the Codes dull both edges. A union must now command 51 percent of the workforce to be recognised. Strikes require a six-week notice, followed by a 14-day cooling-off period. This is not regulation. It is containment.
During Diwali 2024, Deepak Mourya, a steel plant worker in Maharashtra, was allegedly beaten and dumped on the roadside for demanding bonuses at his plant. "I just joined the protest. But the contractor noticed me and after work, while I was on my way to my accommodation, I was picked by the contractor's people and assaulted," he said.
Deepak didn’t file a case—not because he didn’t want to, but because Rs 5,000 in court fees is a luxury he does not possess. Gig workers in Kochi, seafood peelers in Odisha, steel workers in Maharashtra—everyone tells the same story: You can protest all you want. No one will hear you.
The 1936 Payment of Wages Act carried jail time and fines. Under the Wage Code, wage theft now carries a maximum fine or Rs 50,000. Ambedkar’s welfare ecosystem—ESI, EPF—was built on full wages.
The new Wage Code allows half of a worker’s pay to be labelled as “allowances,” reducing contributions to PF, ESI, and gratuity. The result is not theoretical. It is lived pain.
In the steel industry, workers like Sourya Mohan watch Rs 2,000 disappear into “road tax” and arbitrary deductions. In Andhra’s shrimp sheds, migrants like Suchithra Nayak emerge with Rs 700,000 in medical debt. The Social Security Code’s “optional” gig worker coverage—funded by a token 1–2 percent aggregator levy—is laughable. India’s 23.5 million future platform workers will be protected in name only.
The OSH Code pushes permissible shifts to 12 hours, undoing Ambedkar’s decades-long fight for the 48-hour week. Tamil Nadu textile workers describe 30-day months. Odisha seafood workers peel till 2 am. Steel workers endure blistering, sleepless cycles. Inspections have been replaced by “facilitators.”
The watchdog has been domesticated.
A Corporate India vs Constitution India Choice
The OSH Code allows women to work night shifts and hazardous jobs without creating a single enforceable safety guarantee. Women workers like Sabita Dehuri and Suchitra, work through menstrual pain, are denied leaves, and often told that pregnancy is an i convenience.
Commuting after midnight is a gamble with safety. Extending work hours without support doesn’t “empower” women. It pushes them out.
The combined effect of the Codes—collapsed tenure, muted unions, diluted benefits, longer hours, weak penalties, and toothless inspections—creates a new ecosystem: neoliberalism without responsibility.
Ambedkar imagined the opposite: Labour protections rooted in dignity, equality, and democratic voice. India now stands at a crossroads between Corporate India and Constitution India.
But Resistance is Not Dead
There are still embers. Unions can push every story—from Anam’s shredded thumb to Deepak’s roadside beating—into the public record. States can stall rollouts or amend Codes.
Lawmakers can revive tripartism and reinstate real protections. Workers can refuse to be statistics. The question is not whether Ambedkar’s labour framework is being dismantled. It is whether India chooses to build anything worthy in its place. If not, the country risks exchanging its democratic soul for a corporate ledger—one broken worker at a time.
(Rejimon Kuttappan is an independent journalist from Kerala. He is a workers’ rights researcher, forced labour investigator, and author of 'Undocumented'. This is an opinion piece, and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses, nor is responsible for the same.)