What is not dealt with is the efficacy of the contract labour law. What does the licensing and record-keeping result in as far as the individual contract worker is concerned? Have there been many prosecutions against contractors? Which size of contractor? Is there a marked difference between the working conditions and pay of the licensed contractor's workers and those of the small and unlicensed contractors?
Thank you for taking interest in our piece. Sadly, the data we obtained do not answer your questions.
Prosecution powers under the Contract Labour Act are divided between the union government and the state governments, but systematic data is not available. A snapshot is available from an answer to a Parliament Question. Between April 2017 and December 2019, the union government alone launched 9,933 prosecutions against contractors, resulting in 6,221 convictions.No other data about prosecutions is available.
The data is limited to recording the broad nature of work the contractors undertook. No data about pay and working conditions is available. We see that small contractors provided administrative assistance, security services, maintenance, and logistics support, while the largest contractors employed workers for civil construction, electrical substation building, and water supply projects. The largest contractors seem to be involved in large construction projects where the pay may be better due to other reasons.
The deeper question to ask is: What would these employees do if contract work was not available? The law tracks work and pay disputes in contract work but ignores the same in agricultural work. Putting more restrictions may force workers to revert to completely informal work where the outcomes may be worse than what the contractor offers.
Thanks again for your questions and comments as they motivate us to do more research on the topic.
Very good ideas!
What is not dealt with is the efficacy of the contract labour law. What does the licensing and record-keeping result in as far as the individual contract worker is concerned? Have there been many prosecutions against contractors? Which size of contractor? Is there a marked difference between the working conditions and pay of the licensed contractor's workers and those of the small and unlicensed contractors?
Thank you for taking interest in our piece. Sadly, the data we obtained do not answer your questions.
Prosecution powers under the Contract Labour Act are divided between the union government and the state governments, but systematic data is not available. A snapshot is available from an answer to a Parliament Question. Between April 2017 and December 2019, the union government alone launched 9,933 prosecutions against contractors, resulting in 6,221 convictions.No other data about prosecutions is available.
The data is limited to recording the broad nature of work the contractors undertook. No data about pay and working conditions is available. We see that small contractors provided administrative assistance, security services, maintenance, and logistics support, while the largest contractors employed workers for civil construction, electrical substation building, and water supply projects. The largest contractors seem to be involved in large construction projects where the pay may be better due to other reasons.
The deeper question to ask is: What would these employees do if contract work was not available? The law tracks work and pay disputes in contract work but ignores the same in agricultural work. Putting more restrictions may force workers to revert to completely informal work where the outcomes may be worse than what the contractor offers.
Thanks again for your questions and comments as they motivate us to do more research on the topic.