Write an article on the topic 'how covid-19 has effected the lives of labourers'.
Answers
Answer:
Worker health, productivity and employment opportunity
Apart from these legal issues, serious ‘industrial relations’ concerns exist.
Shortage of labour and social distancing principles legitimise the extension of working hours as it optimises the deployment of existing workforce and thus partly tackles the extra costs involved in complying with the MHA’s order.
But is the extension of working hours needed for all industries? Why aren’t the existing provisions in the FA adequate to be used to tackle contingencies mentioned above?
After all, where necessary, employers and unions (wherever they exist) could together determine the labour shortage, extra workload and accordingly calculate the over-time that would be required. The issues arising out of labour deployment will differ across industries and cannot be generalised for the manufacturing sector as a whole, which is what these amendments assume.
What is important to remember is that a 12-hour shift effectively reduces the demand for labour. In the absence of company-worker dialogue, employers may unilaterally take calls, and hence provide room for discrimination regarding employee choices and income distribution among workers. These issues may lead to labour unrest. To be sure, social dialogue could mitigate any adverse effects of a 12-hour shift.
Beyond this, there are several practical issues that affect factory workers. Increased hours of work, especially when the tasks are repetitive and mechanical, will raise fatigue and work stress, hence affecting productivity adversely. In cases where workers thanks to social distancing are performing multiple though related tasks, the possibilities of work-related stress will be much higher. It is also plausible that errors could occur, with even accidents at the workplace cannot be ruled out.
The most serious setback arising out of a 12-hour workday, though, is that it will place women workers at a disadvantage thanks to their multiple roles in the workplace and homes, and women’s employment might be reduced. Women workers are more unlikely to prefer employment which requires them to stay at the workplace, and 12 hours plus travel time will mean less time for family life. Hence, they are least likely to self-select and their economic capacities will be affected.
All these have adverse gender implications. Even for male employees, being away for 12 hours plus travel time in case of travel-based work, scheduling their work-life balance will be affected. Alternatively, in cases of shelter-based work scheduling, their absence from home at a stretch might affect their emotional state, assuming that they will be provided home-like shelter and food.
Also, these notifications will greatly reduce the employment opportunities of ‘precarious’ workers as when there is a likelihood of non-employment of some regular workers, the question of precarious workers does not arise. However, given the labour flexibility drive of employers, it may be that some cost-optimising employers may prefer these precarious workers.
Taking one step back though, the Covid-19 pandemic and economic slowdown has thrown up a wide range of questions that have grave implications for India’s blue-collar factory workforce.
For instance, what if non-employed workers do not get full wages even if they are ready to offer their services or should they be paid lay-off compensation? Is a pandemic a legally valid clause for lay-offs? Even assuming that lay-offs are legally allowed, as per Chapter V-A of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 workers employed in factories employing 50 or more workers only are eligible for it. One may argue that factories employing less than 50 workers may not start production at all, as some reports indicate.
But as a legal principle, how will the non-employed workers be compensated, whether for eight hours or 12 hours of work? All these could be left to social dialogue at the firm level. Issuance of legally defective and macro-based notifications are ill-advised and should be withdrawn. In these sensitive circumstances, talk of labour law reforms in terms of introduction of labour codes will be injudicious and even counter-productive.
The first socio-economic task is to balance lives and livelihoods. There are better state interventions to consider, like wage subsidies.