The discussion on India’s labour reforms has been odd and selective. We keep debating about working hours, fixed-term employment, the right to strike and so on. What we barely discuss is the question that actually determines whether labour rights exist at all: where does the worker go when his/her rights are violated?
Indian labour law has always rested on a simple institutional idea: rights backed by specialised fora. Industrial tribunals, labour courts, and authorities under statutes like the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 were not mere appendages; they were the system’s spine. But the labour codes depart from that architecture without offering any replacement that is even remotely similar.
Take the Industrial Relations Code. The IDA is repealed by it, but there is no attempt at re-creating the adjudicatory density of the IDA. Labour courts and industrial tribunals are combined into ‘Industrial Tribunals’ with expanded jurisdictions, but their number has not been increased. Section 44 provides for reference by the appropriate
government as the gateway to adjudication; this means that the problem the Supreme Court kept warning about has been revived. In its judgment in Sapan Kumar Pandit versus U.P. State Electricity Board, the apex court held that delay or refusal in reference can itself defeat industrial justice.
The situation is further worsened in the Code on Wages. A single “Authority” appointed by the government is the only adjudicatory authority replacing multiple ones (Section 45). The appeal lies with the “Appellate Authority” whose formation and independence are matters to be decided by the delegated legislation. This is not a simplification but a consolidation of the executive power.
What is most discouraging is what the Codes have ignored to do. The Code on Social Security extends coverage on paper but offers no worker-initiated, decentralised enforcement forum. In this regard, the Supreme Court in Bandhua Mukti Morcha versus Union of India had emphasised that labour rights under Articles 21 and 23 of the Constitution can only be guaranteed if there is “effective, accessible, and continuous enforcement machinery”. The Codes go backwards in relation to that constitutional logic.
Historically, Indian labour law has been aware of this point. The first National Commission on Labour strongly warned that reducing access to adjudication would “render protective legislation illusory”. Even the second National Commission on Labour called for the empowerment of labour courts and the minimisation of the executive’s influence over references. The Codes selectively cite the Commission and completely disregard its main warning.
The change from inspectors to facilitators highlights a more significant issue. The inspector’s role was about initiating enforceable consequences. By giving more importance to compliance advisories and compounding, the Codes have reduced the strength of the link between infringement and court hearings.
For women workers, migrants, and gig workers, procedural barriers are no longer mere details; they are the very conditions of their existence. A migrant worker will not be able to wait for a government reference. A platform worker will not be able to utilise the appellate authorities meant for factories. Access to justice, as the legal scholar, Upendra Baxi, has been saying for a long time, is not just a right that comes from somewhere else; it is the very thing that makes all other rights real.
India has reformed labour law before, but it has never spent on dismantling the institutional guarantee given to workers that if they are wronged, they will be heard by someone, somewhere, without having to ask the State for permission first. This promise is now fraying, and no amount of ‘ease of doing business’ rhetoric can hide the sound of it tearing.
Ankita Jain studies in Maharashtra National Law University, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar
