Page 8 - DMGT516_LABOUR_LEGISLATIONS

Unit 1: Labour Welfare and Concept

ensuring workers' safety and social security, looking after labour welfare and providing of the Notes
necessary support measures for sorting out problems relating to employment of both men and
women workers in different sectors has received priority attention.

The improvement of labour welfare and increasing productivity with reasonable level of social
security is one of the prime objectives concerning social and economic policy of the Government.
The resources have been directed through the Plan programmes towards skill formation and
development, monitoring of working conditions, creation of industrial harmony through
infrastructure for health, industrial relations and insurance against disease, accident and
unemployment for the workers and then families. The situation of surplus labour and workers
in the unorganised segment of the economy give rise to unhealthy social practices such as
bonded labour, child labour and adverse working conditions. In the year 1999, Workmen
Compensation Act has been revised to benefit the workers and their families in the case of
death/disability. The labour laws enforcement machinery in the States and at the Centre are
working to amend the laws which require changes, revise rules, regulations orders and
notifications.

1.2 Factors Influencing Labour Legislations

There are a number of factors that had direct or indirect influence on the labour legislations.
They are:
1. Early Exploitative Industrial Society: The early phase of industrialization was an era of
unbridled individualism, freedom of contract and the laissez-faire, and was characterized
by excessive hours of work, employment of young children under very unhygienic and
unhealthy conditions, payment of low-wages and other excesses. The conditions of life
and labour in the early periods of industrialization in India were extremely rigorous –
hours of work were excessive, and the industrial labour drawn from the rural areas was
severely exploited.
The early factory and labour legislation in India resulted from the need for protecting the
interests of the foreign industrialists and investors. In the tea plantations of Assam and
Bengal, where life and work became extremely intolerable, workers started deserting
their place of work for their village homes.
The earliest labour legislation, the Tea District Emigrant Labour Act, 1832 and Workmen's
Breach of Contract Act, 1859 were designed more for the purpose of ensuring a steady
supply of labour to the tea gardens in Assam than for protecting the interests of the
laborers. The latter Act made the desertion of the tea gardens by the laborers, a criminal
offence. This was despite that fact that the conditions of life and work in the tea gardens
were extremely difficult and strenuous.
The first Factory Act of 1881 resulted from the complaints of the Lancashire textile magnates,
against competition by the cotton textiles produced in the Indian mills because the labour
employed by them was extremely cheap. The main idea behind this legislation was to
increase the cost of production of Indian textiles by reducing the hours of work and
improving other working conditions, but they were incidental to the main purpose of the
protection of the interests of the Lancashire industrialists.

2. Early Administrators and the Civil Servants in India were drawn from England: They
brought with them the pragmatism of the British society and were steeped in the English
tradition. So, the pattern of Indian labour legislation has closely followed that of England
with a big time lag. The cotton textile industry was the first to come under the purview of
the Factories Acts in both the countries, though their scope at the early stages was very
restricted.

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