New labour codes to allow 4-day work in a week; check details

Apurva Chandra, secretary and senior IAS officer of the Ministry of labour and Employment, Government of India, has said that the ministry is considering the objections of trade unions on the provision of 12 hours of work per day under the new labour code.

“We are not forcing employees or employers. It gives flexibility. It’s an enabling provision in sync with the changing work culture," Chandra said.

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With the finalization of the draft, the employees will have the option of four working days a week and three days leave with it.

"If an employee works for more than 8 hours a day or more than 48 hours in a week, then he will get double the salary of overtime than normal salary" Chandra said.

In the draft new labour code, it is proposed to make the working hours of the employees up to 12 hours a day. Earlier this period was 9 hours and it also included one hour rest.

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In a code named as Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions, the government has said that companies should be allowed to keep working hours for 12 hours in a day.

Not only this, the rules have also been fixed regarding the calculation of overtime. If an employee works for 15 to 30 minutes, then he will be counted as a full 30 minutes.

He explained that, "The implementation of four types of labour codes like Code on Wages, Industrial Relations, Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions and Social Security will ensure social security of the employees. The process of framing the four labor codes is under process. . Rules will be ready in the next few weeks."

He said that ministry will soon be in a position to implement the four new codes. These include salary / wage codes, codes on industrial relations, work-related safety, codes on health and workplace conditions (OSH) and social security codes".

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Apart from this, the Ministry is preparing an Internet-portal for the registration and welfare of workers in the unorganized sector. 

According to officials, this portal can be ready by June. Registration and other facilities for unorganized sector workers can be provided on this portal. 

In these, registration of workers like contract workers and 'platform' workers will be done free of cost. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had mentioned the establishment of such a web-portal in his speech.

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