Withdraw new labour codes, demands Congress

Opposing the new labour codes brought by the Narendra Modi government, the Congress on Thursday (November 27, 2025) called them anti-labour and demanded their immediate withdrawal.

Addressing a press conference, Chairman of the Unorganised Workers and Employees Congress, Udit Raj, said a movement against the labour codes would be launched across the country.

“These four labour codes — Industrial Relations Code-2020, Occupational Safety, Health Code-2020, Social Security Code-2020, Code on Wages, 2019 — are extremely harmful to workers. These codes strip workers of their rights, eliminate job security, and only serve the interests of corporations,” he told reporters.

The Congress leader claimed that the Industrial Relations Code drastically expanded the scope of the “hire-and-fire” policy. “Earlier, an employer needed approval to dismiss more than 100 workers. Now they can terminate up to 300 without permission,” he said.

Mr. Raj said 44 crore unorganised workers had been left at the mercy of big corporates and crony capitalists, even as their rights had been curtailed and they could not go on a strike anymore.

‘Reduced wages’

He alleged that the revamped definition of wages would sharply reduce take-home pay. By clubbing basic wages with components used to calculate social security, he said, workers’ salaries could drop “by nearly 50%,” while wage revision had been locked at a five-year interval regardless of inflation.

“We demand that the government immediately withdraw these anti-worker new codes,” he said.

Mr. Raj said there used to be strict laws on occupational safety and health in the country, but now the inspection system had been dismantled, and an extremely lax framework had been introduced.

Due to the weakening of the inspection system in the new labour codes, the exploitation of workers would increase, and employers would get exemptions from many legal restrictions, he alleged.

According to the new codes, gig workers had been limited to just registration, and there were no provisions for them under the Employees’ State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) or the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), Mr. Raj said.