-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The EPFO (Employees' Provident Fund Organization), which manages lifetime savings of 6.15 crore individuals, has just made life tougher for workers. Employees will now have to prove that their employers deducted the statutory dues while giving them salaries, a move that will further benefit construction companies and contractors in particular who often claim that they have paid salaries to thousands of workers without actually transferring...

-The Economic Times The labour ministry has moved a Cabinet note saying the government should raise the monthly pension for organised-sector workers to Rs 1,000 and fund the differential, despite the proposal cutting no ice with finance ministry. The Cabinet note, moved by Labour Minister Mallikarjun Kharge, has put out three options, but his ministry is keen that the burden of providing the extra pension does not fall on employees. "We have proposed...

-The Times of India  The labour ministry has written to the finance ministry recommending that the minimum monthly pension for members of the Employees Provident Fund Organization (EPFO) be raised to Rs 1,000 per month. Who will fund the additional Rs 539 crore per year that this will cost, the government or workers, however remains a fraught issue. The EPFO currently has 35 lakh pensioners as its subscribers, of whom 7 lakh...

The exploitation of migrant construction workers has grown alongside the expansion of the industry. It's time the government got serious about upholding the law. A recent report in The Hindu on the violation of labour laws at a massive construction site belonging to the Army Welfare Housing Organisation in Bangalore raises yet again the repeated neglect of regulations relating to the employment and welfare of workers by construction companies in India. For...

-The Hindu   Suggest “necessary preventive” measures to safeguard the interest of workers   Trade union groups on Monday pitched for a worker-oriented Budget for 2012-13 aimed at removing poverty and unemployment and suggested “necessary preventive” measures to safeguard the interests of workers. At their meeting here with Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee — the second in the series of the customary pre-Budget consultations — representatives of trade unions (TUs) proposed that wages of contract labour...