Pay, Leaves And Work Hours: How The New Labour Codes Impact You

The new labour codes allow capping daily working hours from the current 8 to 12 while weekly work hours stay capped at 48.

The employers can step down from a 6-day work week and instead step towards a 4-day work week, but the new codes will mandate them to increase daily work hours from 8 to 12 hours daily.

In light of the above, it allows any employee wishing for a shorter work week, but the employee will have to put in more hours of work on the days he is working.

Also, the new codes allow an increase in the maximum number of overtime hours from 50 hours (as per the Factories Act) to 125 hours (as per the new labour codes) in a quarter across industries.

This would encourage companies to adopt the 4-day work week and employ workers on the weekend, if necessary. The 4-day work would benefit workers with longer periods of rest, to the contrary, it entails longer working hours during the weekdays, which may result in deterioration of workers’ health. Likewise, the increase in the overtime limit may result in additional earnings in the hands of workers at the expense of longer working hours or probably working on weekends as well.

There is another provision which is the one relating to a cap on the deductions. The Employers have to ensure that deductions from the salary rate to specifically permissible deductions (such as contribution to Provident Fund, tax deduction at source (TDS), etc.) and that the total deduction in any month should not exceed 50% of wages.

All the reports pertaining to the implementation of labour codes by July are nothing but speculations.

The union government has missed repeated deadlines to introduce the new labour codes. Since labour falls under the concurrent list of the Constitution, it is required for both the central and the state governments to form rules for the implementation of central legislation.