Labour codes part of neo-liberal project to perpetuate inequality, says economist

H.C. Rajath, president, and S. Akhil, general secretary, State Bank Staff Union, Kerala Circle, honouring R. Ramakumar, economist, at the silver jubilee celebrations of the circle, at an event held in Kozhikode on January 11.
| Photo Credit: K. Ragesh

The four labour codes launched by the Union government are part of a neo-liberal project to transfer wealth and resources from one class of society to another, perpetuating inequality and private profiteering, economist R. Ramakumar has said.

He was delivering the keynote address on the changing labour laws at an event to celebrate the 25^th anniversary of the Kerala Circle of the State Bank Staff Union, an organisation representing the employees of the State Bank of India, here on Saturday (January 11).

Mr. Ramakumar said that the Centre launched the labour codes claiming that the 29 erstwhile labour laws were “being rationalised”. “There is an Industrial Relations Code, Occupational Safety, Health, and Working Conditions Code, Social Security Code, and one on wages. Except for the fourth one, the others were hurriedly bulldozed into Parliament during the Covid lockdown to avoid discussions or street protests. Almost every provision in the erstwhile laws to protect the workers has been taken out and those to protect the interests of the capital have been brought in,” he alleged.

Mr. Ramakumar said that creating “flexible labour conditions” was the key objective of the codes. “This flexibilisation will fragment and split the workforce. Conditions of the labourers will remain precarious, temporary and insecure. You cannot strike or form a labour union. If you are earning over ₹18,000 a month, which is equal to the minimum wages a labourer gets, you are not a worker, you are not entitled to any rights,” he said.

Implementation of such policies meant a rapid transfer of resources such as land at cheap rates from the poor to the rich, which would make the rich richer and the poor poorer, in relative terms. “This also reduces the revenue coming to the State to invest in education, health, poverty alleviation programmes, and employment generation programmes. Also, there had been a sharp reduction in corporate tax, from 30% to 22%. Every year, the government of India is losing up to ₹2 lakh crore because of this,” Mr. Ramakumar said. However, this had not led to any increase in investment by the private capitalists as there was no demand in the market because of lack of employment and stagnant wages, he added. L. Chandrasekhar, general secretary, the All-India State Bank of India Staff Federation, opened the event.