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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Can India's draft labour code really bring social security to its informal workers? -Aarefa Johari

Can India's draft labour code really bring social security to its informal workers? -Aarefa Johari

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published Published on Jan 23, 2019   modified Modified on Jan 23, 2019
-Scroll.in

Trade unionists fear a large part of the unorganised sector might be left out of the ambit of the government’s labour code on social security.

Rekha Patil, a vegetable seller on a footpath in suburban Mumbai, is a small part of India’s vast informal economy. Her husband, a farmer in Palghar, about 110 km north of Mumbai, has an unreliable income. But Patil’s earnings of Rs 350 a day barely sustain her family. She pushes herself to work even when she is sick, afraid of losing a day’s income. This is getting difficult as she ages. But with scant savings and no pension to bank on, 50-year-old Patil cannot dream of retirement.

India’s social security laws are currently applicable only to the organised sector. The Unorganised Workers’ Social Security Act, 2008, has been poorly implemented. A decade after the Act came into force, the majority of India’s workers, like Patil, do not have access to medical insurance, maternity support or retirement benefits.

The Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance government claims it can change this through a new law drafted in 2017. Called the social security code, it will consolidate 15 existing laws on pension, disability and life insurance as well as maternity, medical and unemployment coverage. It is one of the four labour codes that the Union government has drafted to ease the implementation of India’s labour laws.

The main advantage of the new social security code is that it will cover both the organised and the unorganised sector – about 50 crore workers, the government claims.

But labour activists say the law has major flaws that will keep most informal workers out of its ambit. Worse, they point out that workers will be cross-subsiding other workers since the government will not contribute to the social security fund that the law seeks to create.

“It is good that the code includes both formal and informal sector workers, but the way the latter needs to be dealt with is very different,” said Mirai Chatterjee, the director of social security at the Self-Employed Women’s Association, or SEWA, a trade union of more than 15 lakh women

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Scroll.in, 22 January, 2019, https://scroll.in/article/909579/can-indias-draft-labour-code-really-bring-social-security-to-its-informal-workers?fbclid=IwAR1cvCXcZ0Nyek7NlN5-8GHKiGcnI1uCQI7-nn4cB2KXm-0


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