The Central government, which is amalgamating labour laws into four major codes, will introduce a bill in the next Parliament session to introduce two of these codes, Minister of State for Labour and Employment Bandaru Dattatreya said here on Friday.
After a meeting with members of textile industry associations at Southern India Mills’ Association(SIMA), the Minister told medipersons that the 44 labour laws would be amalgamated into code on wages, code on industrial relations, code on social security and code on safety, health, and working conditions. Tripartite consultations had been completed for the first two codes (wages and industrial relations). This would be discussed at an inter-ministerial meeting, the Cabinet and then introduced in Parliament.
The idea behind amalgamating labour laws is to simplify and rationalise them. It would be a win-win situation for workers as well as employers. The bill for the next two codes would be introduced after conducting tripartite meetings, he said.
The Centre had also brought down the number of registers that come under compliance of nine Central Acts, from 56 to five. “We will develop software for the five common registers and it will be uploaded on the portal of the Ministry,” he added. Further, since labour comes under the concurrent list, the Centre had given a Shop and Establishments model act to the State Governments.
“We are trying to complete activation of UAN numbers by the end of March this year,” he added.
The Employees Provident Fund Organisation and the Employees State Insurance Scheme are two big social security networks under the Ministry. The total number of subscribers under EPFO is 4.8 crore and the number of persons insured under ESI is 2.10 crore, he said.
