While Asian economies boomed before the global recession in 2008, the fruits of that progress did not translate into better wages or secure employment conditions for workers in the region. The International Labour Organisation (ILO)'s Asian Decent Work Decade launched in 2006 was aimed at five priority areas of competitiveness, productivity and jobs; labour market governance; youth employment, managing labour migration and local development for poverty reduction. Today workers' unions are...

Those who see a direct link between wage inflation and the employment guarantee scheme need to think again Rural wage rates have been rising at quite a fast rate in recent months. Farmers have been complaining about their inability to get cheap labour for their farms. Industry, too, has raised the alarm saying that this is squeezing their margins; higher rural wages mean fewer people are willing to work on construction...

We have five million children in the labour market, say official figures. Their actual numbers may be four times as many. As a nation, we have failed each one of them…   Millions of our children still labour today, in factories, farms, kilns, mines, homes and city waste dumps, when they should be in school or in a playground. We profoundly fail these children, collectively depriving them of education, play, rest, healthy...

The finance ministry is putting shape to a new social security scheme for unorganized sector workers, creating for the first time a safety net for millions of underpaid and overworked people, many of whom living in abject poverty.  The ministry has discussed with the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) and the four state run non-life insurance companies the contours of this scheme that will provide life insurance, health cover and retirement pension...

They are the children of Migrant Labourers, security guards, maids and gardeners for whom access to formal education would have been a distant goal, had it not been for two women who started teaching them under a tree in Sector 56, two years ago. The twosome are effectively giving these underprivileged children their right to education without any fanfare. From a measly five-six students, their number has now grown to...