{"id":240657,"date":"2023-05-02T20:07:59","date_gmt":"2023-05-02T14:37:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=240657"},"modified":"2023-05-03T17:07:37","modified_gmt":"2023-05-03T11:37:37","slug":"labour-laws-fairness-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/labour-laws-fairness-challenge\/","title":{"rendered":"Labour laws’ fairness challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Source<\/strong>: The post is based on the article\u00a0\u201cLabour laws’ fairness challenge<\/strong>\u201d published in Business Standard <\/strong>on\u00a02nd<\/sup> May 2023<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Syllabus: GS 3 \u2013 Employment<\/strong><\/p>\n

Relevance: <\/strong>concerns associated with amendments made in labour laws by some states<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

News<\/strong>: Some states have amended their labour laws and have brought changes.<\/p>\n

What are the changes brought by the states in their labour laws?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Karnataka has allowed<\/strong> 12-hour work shifts instead of eight or nine. It has increased overtime from 75 hours to 145 hours in three months, and allowed women to work in the night shift.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

These work hours are, however, capped at 48 hours per week or 4 days a week.<\/p>\n

Similar changes in working hours have been brought by Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

These changes have been brought up on the request of several global contract manufacturing firms.<\/p>\n

What are the concerns with these amendments?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The concerns with these amendments are whether these changes improve labour productivity <\/strong>and are efficient in creating new jobs or it leads to worse working conditions and labour exploitation.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is argued that the flexibility to institute a 12-hour workday will improve productivity and will make India competitive with its counterparts in countries like China or Taiwan or Korea.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some studies have also found that longer hours improve productivity because workers need to settle down in a shift before his\/her productivity hits its peak.<\/p>\n

However, a large number of studies have found that a longer number of working hours decreases productivity due to fatigue.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Newer studies have also suggested<\/strong> that rather than the number of working hours, other factors such as conditions at work, attribute of labour and work schedule play a much bigger role in increasing productivity.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Climate change and geographical locations <\/strong>may also affect the productivity of workers.<\/p>\n

In terms of labour exploitation,<\/strong> it is hard to argue whether a 12-hour work shift coupled with four days will lead to labour exploitation. However, if the total number of hours per week changes, then it might lead to labour exploitation.<\/p>\n

What can be the way ahead?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Factors such as protections for workers<\/strong> (wages, hiring and firing practices, insurance, etc.) and workplace conditions<\/strong> (safety norms, proper facilities and training etc.) are more important for workers rather than long working hours.<\/strong><\/p>\n

These factors should be taken into account because today factories tend to hire more contract workers<\/strong>, and often the terms and conditions for these workers are lower than those who are in the company\u2019s roles.<\/p>\n

Hence, these are the issues that the government should be most worried about, and they should be closely regulated and monitored.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Source: The post is based on the article\u00a0\u201cLabour laws’ fairness challenge\u201d published in Business Standard on\u00a02nd May 2023. Syllabus: GS 3 \u2013 Employment Relevance: concerns associated with amendments made in labour laws by some states. News: Some states have amended their labour laws and have brought changes. What are the changes brought by the states… Continue reading Labour laws’ fairness challenge<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10320,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230,9],"tags":[10503,216,11557],"class_list":["post-240657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-public","tag-business-standard","tag-gs-paper-3","tag-labour-laws","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704949849},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10320"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240657\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}