Skip to main content

Labour Ministry seeks Cabinet approval for wage code Bill

By
The Labour Ministry has sought Cabinet’s approval for the wage code Bill that seeks to empower the Centre to fix a minimum wage applicable across all sectors in the entire country.
“We have already sent the wage code Bill for Cabinet approval. We will also send the Labour Code on Industrial Relations Bill in a week,” Labour Secretary Shankar Aggarwal said after a seminar on Labour Reforms. “We are trying to create a mechanism for minimum wage for all sectors in the country.”
At present, the Centre and states fix minimum wages for different categories of workers in various sectors under their respective jurisdictions.
Once it sees the light of day, the Wage Code will allow fixing a benchmark wage for workers, which will have to be adhered to by the states as well. This provision will ensure a minimum wage to workers across the country.
However, the states will be free to prescribe higher wages.The Labour Ministry is likely to push the Code on Wages and Code on Industrial Relations in the Budget session of Parliament beginning next week.
Aggarwal said the ministry will finalise the Labour Code on Social Security and Welfare and the Labour Code on Safety and Working Conditions in a month.Through labour reforms, the Centre intends to convert 44 labour laws into four labour codes — wages, industrial relations, social security and safety.
The ministry is pursuing labour reforms with a focus on increasing ease of doing business by providing flexibility to hire workers. It’s a big challenge, according to Aggarwal, to create 10 million jobs every year, which can be a reality with changes in the labour laws.
“There are many rules and regulations which are stumbling blocks. We got to change labour laws created in 1926, 1936 and 1946. The government will play the role of an arbitrator,” he added.
Aggarwal also said retirement fund body EPFO and ESIC cover only 10 per cent of the workforce in the country and the government wants to provide quality (social security) products to all workers and people.
The ministry has also sent the Small Factories Bill for the Cabinet approval, which will exempt units with less than 40 workers from compliance of 14 labour laws.
These units will be able to buy health insurance and provident fund products from the open market.
Business Standard, New Delhi, 20th Feb. 2016

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Household debt up, but India still lags emerging-market economies: RBI

By
  Although household debt in India is rising, driven by increased borrowing from the financial sector, it remains lower than in other emerging-market economies (EMEs), the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said in its Financial Stability Report. It added that non-housing retail loans, largely taken for consumption, accounted for 55 per cent of total household debt.As of December 2024, India’s household debt-to-gross domestic product ratio stood at 41.9 per cent. “...Non-housing retail loans, which are mostly used for consumption purposes, formed 54.9 per cent of total household debt as of March 2025 and 25.7 per cent of disposable income as of March 2024. Moreover, the share of these loans has been growing consistently over the years, and their growth has outpaced that of both housing loans and agriculture and business loans,” the RBI said in its report.Housing loans, by contrast, made up 29 per cent of household debt, and their growth has remained steady. However, disaggregated data sho...
Post a Comment
Read more

External spillovers likely to hit India's financial system: RBI report

By
  While India’s growth remains insulated from global headwinds mainly due to buoyant domestic demand, the domestic financial system could, however, be impacted by external spillovers, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said in its half yearly Financial Stability Report published on Monday.Furthermore, the rising global trade disputes and intensifying geopolitical hostilities could negatively impact the domestic growth outlook and reduce the demand for bank credit, which has decelerated sharply. “Moreover, it could also lead to increased risk aversion among investors and further corrections in domestic equity markets, which despite the recent correction, remain at the high end of their historical range,” the report said.It noted that there is some build-up of stress, primarily in financial markets, on account of global spillovers, which is reflected in the marginal rise in the financial system stress indicator, an indicator of the stress level in the financial system, compared to its p...
Post a Comment
Read more

Retail inflation cools to a six-year low of 2.82% in May on moderating food prices

By
  New Delhi: Retail inflation in India cooled to its lowest level in over six years in May, helped by a sharp moderation in food prices, according to provisional government data released Thursday.Consumer Price Index (CPI)-based inflation eased to 2.82% year-on-year, down from 3.16% in April and 4.8% in May last year, data from the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) showed. This marks the fourth consecutive month of sub-4% inflation, the longest such streak in at least five years.The data comes just days after the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) Monetary Policy Committee cut the repo rate by 50 basis points to 5.5%, its third straight cut and a cumulative reduction of 100 basis points since the easing cycle began in February. The move signals a possible pivot from inflation control to supporting growth.Food inflation came in at just 0.99% in May, down from 1.78% in April and a sharp decline from 8.69% a year ago.A Mint poll of 15 economists had projected CPI ...
Post a Comment
Read more