MUMBAI/CHENNAI - Workers in India are set to face longer days and lower pay in a"race to the bottom", academics, activists and unions said, as six states plan to suspend labour laws to help industry recover from the coronavirus lockdown.
"It's not only regression, it's a deep slide into a bottomless pit and a race to the bottom of labour standards," labour economist K.R. Shyam Sundar, a professor at the Xavier School of Management, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.Under the planned labour law suspensions announced so far, working shifts in the six states would be extended from eight hours to 12 hours for a three-month period.
Officials in the six states say the measures will help local industries to bounce back and reverse losses incurred during the weeks of lockdown, and also lure new investment. "We work 10 hours in any case," he said by phone."It's going to be difficult from here on. Our employers have had no income. How will they pay us?""The new rules will create more conflicts and increase slavery," said Mr Lenin Raghuvanshi, convener of non-profit People's Vigilance Committee on Human Rights.
Economists say even factories and shop floors in the formal sector would start operating like sweatshops if staff were working 12-hour shifts without social security.
I lost is at this 🤣 Lenin? Suryavanshi 🤣🤣
The whole article has been written on the presumptions of a college professor. It’s NOT the truth. Strait times you can do better, there is no fun in looking down on other countries by getting accounts from irrelevant people who are not even policy maker.