Reading V of XII · Act 35 of 2020
॥ श्रम संहिताएं ॥
— Welfare · in force since 21 Nov 2025 —
Twenty-nine labour laws collapsed into four. Passed in 2020; brought into force nationally on 21 Nov 2025.
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This was not one law. It was a replacement operating system for labour regulation.
Editorial readingThe pitch was simplification: many definitions, many inspectors, many registers, many Acts — collapsed into four codes for wages, industrial relations, social security, and occupational safety.
But simplification is never neutral. A code that harmonises compliance for employers also rewrites thresholds for standing orders, retrenchment permissions, contract labour, gig work, inspections, and wage calculation. The political promise was formalisation. The trade-union fear was dilution.
The Code on Wages passed in 2019. The other three Codes passed in September 2020, during the pandemic session. Three were examined by Standing Committees in earlier Bill form; the final passage was fast and largely by voice vote.
This was not one law. It was a replacement operating system for labour regulation.
Editorial readingThe live test is implementation: how states frame rules, how inspectors enforce them, and whether gig and informal workers receive real social security rather than statutory recognition alone.
Supporters read the Codes as a long-delayed rationalisation of a fragmented labour law regime.
Support readingCritics read the same consolidation as a bargaining-power shift toward employers, especially on closure, retrenchment, and union recognition.
Critique readingThe Codes are unusually dependent on subordinate law. Their politics therefore did not end at assent. It moved into draft rules, state notifications, compliance systems, and the slow administrative conversion from old Acts to new Codes.