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Labour rights and standards of migrant workers
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Introduction
The increasing development and encouragement of technology made the workers run from one place to another in search of work to fight rising unemployment and poverty. The term âmigrant workersâ is defined under the International Labor Organization (ILO) which describes the condition of a worker who moves from one place to another or who has already migrated to another place than their own, in search of work. The United Nations also defined the term âmigrant worker who is engaged or will engage in any kind of remunerated activity provided some other state with a view of getting wages in which he is not a citizen, under the convention which was introduced for Protection of the Rights of all Migrant Workers and Members of their Families. It further defines the undocumented worker or irregular worker which means the workers who donât have complete documents nor completed their legal formality but still their stay in the country is more than authorized length.
Labor rights and labor standards for migrant labor in India
The intent of the government and the employers is anything that is to be revived and has to be on the backs of the laborers, making them even more miserable than they are now. Over the years one has seen the real formalization of labor and now it has become even more informed. The mechanism has been through contractor and casualization. The casual way of working doesnât recognize the worker at all. As far as employers are concerned, itâs just a mask of unidentified labor, and that is the problem that has now come up. During the pandemic, there was a complete criminalization of migrant workers existence, as a migrant person cannot be out on the streets of a city to buy even ration and protest otherwise they have to face lathe charges from police to send labourers back to their respective residential places if not houses. Migrant workers canât even go further from the state border to their home state. Whenever we talk about labour conditions in India, there can be no presence of demarcation between the social question and the question of labour. When we talk about the social question, the issue of caste, gender, minorities, and ethnic identities has become widely important. 1 Monika Bagaria, B.B.A. LL.B(H.), 8th Semester
The recognition of the fact that India is so deeply hierarchical and discriminatory that we donât care about classes of labour. That is the situation from which India has existed in all times despite whatever pattern of capitalist development India witnessed with time. The fact that Indian culture and governance hand in hand has been able to treat all kinds of indignities of labour, that citizens of India do not imbue physical labour with human dignity. Labour policy is merely a part of how we structure ourselves and is used to dealing with vulnerable labour at the bottom of the pyramid. Institutions were never created irrespective of the conundrum that India had faced in terms of how to give handouts to workers; it is believed that the Indian state can deliver in the most complex situations. Story of labour transformed its specific ways after 1991 with liberalization and Indian states started liberalizing a phase of labour laws more De Facto than De Jure dealing with the states rather than the centre labour market in-formalized as a result of such change. The heart of the Indian economy was followed out from the 1990s onwards with an accelerating pace in this century so that the organized sector of the economy itself became informalized. Even at the beginning of this century, 73% of organized sector manufacturing in this country was already informal and that increased to 77% in 2017-18. The organized service sector which was technically the most formal part of the economy was 33% informal in 2004-05 and became 52% informal in 2017-18. If growth is kept into consideration, over the last 15-20 years, India has had declining agricultural employment, but this was matched by the very slow rate of growth of formal employment. Primarily it was informal employment that has grown in this country and it grew within the purview of the labour law that India has. The labour law did not afford any protection to any section of the labour either within the formal sector of the economy or within the informal sector of the economy. This occurred much before the nature of the state. India still has a new liberal state under this government, but now we have a harder and rigid state. In a state which believes that the courts will do its bidding and interpret laws, the legislature will make just and reasonable laws followed by the executive, leading to implement such laws most efficiently and effectively. The changes started occurring much earlier, previously a modicum of regulation of unorganized sector workers was lacking but over the past 20-30 years it is the organized sector of the economy which has become unbuttoned. Unconventionality and migration have to be understood simultaneously as it has gone hand in hand and they co-exist with discrimination in labor market segmentation. The growth into
class society with the condition that migrant labour was facing during their period of hardship and struggle.
Women labour
The state now believes economic revival is possible only by further weakening of labour protections and many states have used ordinances to go down the path. Within that larger context, the question of gender and labour also assumes a very urgent relevance because of the extraordinary scale of decline in women employment which India has witnessed between 2004-05 and 2017-18. In responding to the pandemic (covid-19), migrant workers were not the area of concern for the central government as the nation has to deal with a catastrophic virus attacking the country speedily. Women migrant workers were completely out of the sight of the state and its governing bodies. Provisions were lacking which needed to be there for the women labour for their protection, safety, and health. Not only survival was at stake, even terms of travel, food, and rebuilding of women migrant labour were also forsaken. As far as the lockdown is concerned in India due to the pandemic, it has affected the entire universe of informal work. Here 85-90% of the working class has been referred. Dwelling in India and the consumption data also shows very clearly that 80% of households have experienced significant declines in consumption without having savings to cope with the pandemic. Covid-19 has proven to be a very severe crisis. It would be wrong if it is said that this crisis lends itself to what people call V-shaped recovery. Coming out of such destructive crises is going to be extremely protracted. The major issue of concern is going to be the problem of demand. External demand which is almost 30% of the gross domestic product s going to take an extraordinarily long time to revive. Demand should be systematically revived and stipulated. The government of India has announced a stimulus package, which is less than 1% of GDP. Alongside, the government has announced a medium-term reform package which mostly regurgitates the old reforms with some new sets of amendments and alterations. There is nothing which can help revive Indiaâs economy in the last 6 months. India has witnessed a set of changes in labour laws. There was a prototype recommendation made by the central government that states need to respond in attracting investments which includes both domestic and international investments through lengthening of the Labor Day, through
demolishing labour laws, and so on. From a labor economic point of view, this is a bizarre response to the extremely serious crises. The major manifestation of which is in the form of demand contraction, nothing much has been done. Nearly 0.8% of GDP is going for demand. The liberalization of labour laws does not lend itself to either hire employment or high growth scenarios. When there is a severe quantity rationing of employment, all the data from Indian states i.e. cross-sectional data, time-series data tells us that it is majorly weaker sections and particularly women whose employment declined very precipitously. India had experienced a decline of 18% in female labour post participation over the last two decades. Unfortunately, this situation will exacerbate in years to come. Formerly, mere workforce participation rates have been more or less stable. Female workforce participation has been declining. In the next two-three years, India will witness extreme constriction of overall employment within which sharp declining rates of women workforce participation will be seen imminently with sharper impact on the wages and earnings of the labour class population irrespective of their age and gender. The trafficking in persons (Prevention, care, and rehabilitation bill 2021) was placed in the public domain by the Ministry of Women and Child Development. The concerned and responsible government authority does not highlight the improvements of employer-employee relationship but majorly focuses on Dalit or Tribal migrant workers to take on his employer. The labour will be sent and rescued to perform such labour practices through forceful means and this new law will ultimately prove in degrading the livelihood of labour capital. While anyone who is exposed to forced labour should discover a response in law. The enrollment and development for such work is regularly an aftereffect of affectation and may likewise include bonus promises and duplicity, ultimately resulting in bringing them under the meaning of trafficking. Dragging National Investigation Agency authorities in investigating trafficking crimes including young migrant workers as casualties is contrary to the standard of the well-being of the child. In this regard, the Draft Bill is in opposition to the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 which Accenture on child-friendly structure through the
Shockingly, regardless of many years of lawful activism on issues of bonded labour, a viewpoint on the particular types of subjugation of bonded labour migrants has stayed untapped. No information is accessible on the quantity of women labourers delivered from bondage, nor is there any conversation on the estimation of free wages for women when nuclear families of work are paid at piece rates.
Conclusion
The movement of migrant workers was unstoppable despite having rules and laws for the regulation of policies and schemes favouring poor labourers and migrant workers at large. Planning was the key factor that was missing throughout the timeline and even during the Covid-19 Pandemic when it was required the most so as to control the chaotic spread of people around the world. Efforts were to regulate the movement and improve the living standards of labourers but the result came out was not satisfying as expected. Despite having rigid laws and policies and the existence of a plethora of legislation at all levels state, national and international, labourers still have to suffer and fight to get their basic human rights enshrined in the ILO. Merely planning and executing a bit of it wonât give out the best result with efficiency and effectiveness. Proper implementation and strict interpretations of policies and provisions by the governing and law framing bodies must need to be adopted and strengthened to ensure the availability of resources, rights and basic respect to the labour class people so as to make the world free and fair for them to survive without facing many difficulties which can and should be avoided if genuine and appropriate measures come in force with a vision to achieve certain goals which will devise ameliorating the conditions of the labourers and migrant workers. Most states despite their efforts have remained ineffective in regulating the movement of migrant workers and also screening them properly. It is astonishing to note that even after the existence of a plethora of legislation and labour standards at the national and international level, there still remains a wide gap between the basic human rights of labourers and the legal framework governing their rights. Policymakers need to take a practical approach towards the protection of the rights of the migrant labourers as their social situation is already difficult. Covid-19 outbreak underlined the grave inadequacies in the policy of Disaster Management constructed by the Government of India.
In this manner, it very well may be inferred that there exist inconsistencies in Indiaâs pandemic and crisis replication techniques that should be examined critically. The technique, which builds the incorporation of all parts of the intramural migrantsâ local area in the public eye, particularly kids and ladies, ought to be more empathetic. It is withal suggested that in advance of presenting any enactment that could affect the existence of the majority, the public should be taken into certainty. Central to turn away unexpected strategy choices can influence the existences of huge masses. Apprehension on the need to focus on inner movement in policy making moreover should be increased. In Indian culture, there is a further need to modify the disparaging discernment framed on the migrant workers. Itâs undeniably true that most nations have adopted a lazy strategy towards the ILO norms for transient workers/labourers. Apparently, nations should consolidate authoritative systems as per the ILO guidelines; in any case, most have neglected to do as such. The work laws in India actually have far to go.
