Employers refuse to put contract workers on par with regular staff

NEW DELHI: Employers are opposing extention of the Contract Labour Act to cos with less than 20 employees. At present, the law applies only to organisations employing more than 20 workers.

A proposal by the employees organisation at the conference, which was backed by state governments, suggests in case of contract labour performing the same or similar work as workers directly appointed by the employer there should be parity in terms of wage rates, holidays, hours of work, social security benefits and other conditions of service.
Similar changes are envisaged in the amendments to the contract labour law mooted by the labour ministry.
If implemented, they will bring about a big change in the working conditions of the 130 million contract workers, many of them underpaid and over-worked .

The current rules say that a contract worker must be paid at least the minimum wage prescribed for the government for a particular work, but they do not prescribe same pay for same work across an organisation.

Under the proposed law employers would have to lift the wages and bene-Employers have refused to back the government’s proposal to extend same wages, leave and social security benefits to contract workers as provided to regular employees doing similar work.

The government could go ahead with changes in the contract labour law to ensure this parity, but implementation would be difficult if the changes are pushed through without consensus.

“We do not want to give facilities such as a five days week, forty days leave or LTC to contract workers. After all one also has to look at their education and skill levels,” Michael Dias, secretary, The Employers Association , Delhi, told ET.

The Indian Labour Conference, a tripartite meet of the government, employer and employee organisations , that concluded in Delhi on Wednesday reiterated a number of action points but did not reach a consensus on this contentious issues.
Employers have also opposed the suggestion that all organisations should fits of contract workers to that of permanent employee doing similar work.

While agreeing on the need for better implementation of the existing contract labour laws, the employers’ organisations sought to emphasise the difference in the two categories of workers.

They argued that regular workers with better and multiple skills deserved to get more than the low-skill contract labour. The argument of lack of skills was, however, rejected by employee representatives.

“If the contract workers are not welleducated and have low skills, why employ them at all and lower the quality of industrial production,” countered Kashmir Singh Thakur from the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU).

The employees’ organisations also insisted on absorption of contract labour as regular employees. The government has been attempting to work out a compromise between the two sides for some time to put in place a law that makes work conditions fair for contract labour but at the same time ensures that the flexibility given to employers to hire and fire is retained.