THERE WAS A SPECULATION IN THE AIR that four new labour codes might get implemented April 2025 onwards. However, it did not happen. There is no official communication from the Ministry of Labour & Employment (‘MoLE’) in this regard. However, in its year-end review released on December 28, 2024, MoLE mentioned that thirty six States/Union territories are expected to complete drafting and notify the Rules that are required for rolling out of the labour codes by March 31. Over the last few months, there were few hints from the official quarters that the government will soon notify the implementation date.
The government embarked on the formulation of labour codes during the year 2017-18. Following that, four new labour codes were enacted namely, Code on Wages 2019, Social Security Code 2020, Industrial Relations Code, 2020 and Occupational Safety Health Working Conditions (‘OSHWC’) Code, 2020. By September 2020, all the four new codes were enacted and received presidential assent.
Subsequently, by March 2021, MoLE came up with draft Rules on all the four labour codes. However, for some inexplicable reasons, implementation of these four new codes did not start till date.
Essentially, these four new labour codes merged twenty nine existing labour laws into four broad categories namely wage, social security, industrial relation and OSHWC. Once these codes are implemented, the existing twenty nine laws will cease to exist. It has been almost four and half years since these codes became laws. Apart from a few exceptions like West Bengal, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Sikkim and UTs like Andaman & Nicobar Islands, all others have drafted and pre-published the Rules. Technically, nothing prevents MoLE from implementing the four new labour codes as such.
