The employee-friendly labour code on occupational safety, health and working conditions (OSH), which proposes to extend the ambit of such facilities from nine major sectors at present to all establishments having 10 or more employees and to all mines and docks, will likely be passed in the ongoing session of Parliament.
The OSH Bill, which also proposes to allow women to work in the night shift, seeks to amalgamate extant 13 enactments relating to factories, building and construction workers, contract labourer and working journalists among others was introduced in Lok Sabha on July 23, 2019; but was referred to the standing committee on labour. Adopting its report on February 7, the committee submitted it to the House on February 14.
“Based on the suggestions made by the Committee, there will be some amendments to the code. The Cabinet will soon take up the amended code for its approval. I hope the Bill will be passed in both the Houses in the current session,” labour minister Santosh Kumar Gangwar told FE.
At present, different applicability thresholds exist for welfare provisions like creche, canteen, first-aid, etc. in different Acts. The proposed code has envisaged uniform threshold for welfare provisions for all establishments as far as feasible. For canteen, the existing provision was 100-250 employees in an organisation. It will be revised for every 100 employees in the proposed OSH code. A 50-employee organisation should have creche facility.
The code also mandates every employer to hand over employment letter to every employee. It also makes it mandatory for the employers to provide free of cost annual health check-up for employees above prescribed age for prescribed tests.
In its report, the standing committee pointed out that concerns were raised from many quarters for not keeping the offices of the central and state governments under the purview of the code. As the committee sought clarifications, the ministry of labour of employment justified the move, saying, “The OSH Code cannot be applied on central/state government as their hours of work, leave, welfare facilities, duties of employer, etc. are governed by appropriate government rules.”
However, contract workers engaged in the government offices would be covered under the Code. The standing committee has asked the labour ministry to clarify the definition of ‘contract labour’ under the Code and improve it further so as to cover all types of contract workers.
