A month after the government’s draft labour code suggested daily working hour limits could be raised from nine to 12 hours, a report has claimed the government now plans to limit this to eight.
According to a report in the Economic Times citing people with knowledge of the matter, the government wants to end the “misconception” that the new labour laws allow a 12-hour workday, and will specific a cut-off of eight hours for daily work hours, crossing which, employees should be paid overtime wages of double regular daily pay.
In addition, Labour Secretary Apurva Chandra told PTI that the government wants to implement the four labour codes in one go from April 1 next year, to usher in a new wave of reforms in industrial relations. In September, amid opposition protests, the government passed the Industrial Relations Code, 2020, Code on Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Bill, 2020 and Social Security Code, 2020 in the Lok Sabha and Rajya. These codes, which combined 29 different labour laws into four codes, later received the Presidential Assent.
This report of an 8-hour-work day comes after the incident at the Wistron iPhone plant near Bengaluru, which highlighted tensions between labourers and employers over unpaid wages.
As per the International Labour Organisation’s 1930 Hours of Work (Commerce and Offices) Convention, the general standard is for 48 regular hours of work per week with a maximum of eight hours per day.
