Old labour laws belong to history, new labour codes to the future: Supreme Court Justice Manmohan

Supreme Court Justice Manmohan on Thursday said that India’s century-old labour laws had outlived their utility and must give way to a modern framework that responds to contemporary forms of work.

He said that the new labour codes are intended to address long-standing fragmentation in labour regulation.

“The 100-year-old laws have served their times. They belong to history. These new codes belong to our future,” Justice Manmohan said

He was delivering the inaugural address at a conference on the four labour codes organised by the Society of Indian Law Firms (SILF) and the Confederation of Indian Industry at New Delhi.

He was joined by Senior Advocate Colin Gonsalves and Law Ministry's additional secretary Manoj Kumar.

Recalling his early years at the Bar, Justice Manmohan said labour litigation was once sharply polarised.

“When I joined the practice, I think labour litigation was at its peak. Lawyers then appeared almost exclusively either for management or for labour. That sharp divide which was there is now missing,” he noted.

Justice Manmohan observed that many of India’s labour statutes were enacted in vastly different economic conditions and had struggled to keep pace with change.

Referring to some of the key enactments, he said,

“We had the Trade Unions Act, which is of 1926, the Payment of Wages Act of 1936. So you can imagine what vintage these were.”

Law cannot remain static, Justice Manmohan emphaasised.

“Laws need to be continuously updated, refreshed, because they have to pace with the times. In life, nothing is static.”

He pointed to inconsistencies and outdated assumptions in older labour laws, including definitions that no longer reflected modern industrial realities.

Referring to the rise of platform-based businesses, Justice Manmohan said,

“Can you imagine an aggregator like Ola owning no car? It owns no car and yet everyone books taxis on this aggregator. How are you going to deal with their workforce or the gig workers?”

On scale of India’s workforce, he said experts estimate it to be in the range of 50 crores, with nearly 90 percent of them in the unorganised sector which is beyond the pale of the law.

On the objective of the labour codes, Justice Manmohan said,

“I believe that the new labour codes at least seek to strike a balance between enhancing labour market flexibility and strengthening the worker protection within a modern, unified and simplified regulatory framework.”

He stressed that legislation alone would not determine outcomes and implementation will be the real test of these four codes, he said.

Labour is a concurrent subject and States would have to play a crucial role in framing rules and building administrative capacity, he underlined.

Earlier, SILF president Lalit Bhasin, in his opening remarks, said decades of piecemeal labour legislation had created confusion and excessive regulation.

“If you bring in more and more regulators, that brings in more disputes. Good for lawyers, but bad for the country, bad for the economy,” he said.

Bhasin described the labour codes as an exercise in consolidation.

“I describe it as old wine in new bottles. Because substance of the law has been retained, but new features have been added.”

He added that whether the new framework was workable or beneficial will be debated upon through discussions such as the conference.