A Critical Analysis of India’s Labour Codes with special reference to the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020

The reconsolidation of more than forty central labour laws into four labour codes in India, the Code of Wages (2019), the Code on Industrial Relations (2020), the Code on Social Security (2020), and the Occupational Safety, and Working Conditions Code (2020) is the most extensive legislative reform of the labour legislation system of the Country since Independence. In the paper, a critical analysis of that consolidation is presented, and the focus is on the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 (OSH Code). Using doctrinal and analytical approaches, it aligns the major provisions of the code with the substantive provisions of the previous statutes, international labour conventions, and constitutional provisions. It claims that the OSH Code has achieved Significant gains in defining clarity, inter-sectoral coverage, and welfare provisions to migrant workers, but at the same time, it erodes some of the hard-fought protections by over-delegating to lower-order rule-making, weakening enforcement mechanisms, and ambiguities that leave managerial discretion to the safety of workers. The article finishes with some reform suggestions that will help close the gap between the legislative aspiration and practical implementation.