The country is on the verge of witnessing a new page in the country's labor history. Four consolidated labour codes are poised to lay down stringent 44 labour legislations that already exist. India is set to experience a new page in the country's labor history.

While the government is welcoming them to be a part of this with ease modes, relief, and business facilitation, employees as well as labor unions are ringing an alarm bell stating that their rights would become diluted. Well, even prior to even codes, a fury all over the nation made a nation-level appeal on the 20th of May 2025, for strike.

The four labor law codes—Code on Wages (2019), Industrial Relations Code (2020), Code on Social Security (2020), and Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code (2020)—were legislated to consolidate India's archaic labor legislations.

The government thought bunching the four into fours of small codes would save bureaucracy, make compliance easier, and attract foreign capital. But the reform cover-up sweeps, say the critics, a dangerous intrusion into business based on India's humongous manpower, into unorganized and unstructured industry. Unions Take up Protest

Indian trade unions are together against the codes as anti-staff and one step back from workers' rights.

Eight main unions and one single independent federation organized a common conference on 20th April 2025, at Ranchi on Sanyukta Manch for a forceful all-India strike.

Central unions attending the conference include Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC), Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), All India Central Council of Trade Unions (AICCTU), and Hind Mazdoor Sabha. The unions grumble that the new codes render it hard for employees to declare a strike, water down job security, and fail to fully provide occupational security—unseemly fringes that have been a feature of India's labor movement for decades.

Legal and Practical Issues

One such contentious legislations is the Industrial Relations Code, which effectively eliminates the right to strike.

It is a 60-day notice and bans strike against the tribunal in hearings, practically gagging workers' voice.

It is viewed by critics as intentional denial of democratic dissent in practice.

The reforms also confer the right on the workers to be retrenched in companies with fewer than 300 employees without the approval of the earlier government, hence with it the potential for greater job insecurity. While the Code on Social Security makes it clear that gig and platform workers are covered under it, nothing is mentioned about implementing the code or how the workers are protected. ### Protests Signal Growing Fury of Workers There were front-page protests against the labor codes already.

Thousands of employees in Delhi, Kolkata, and Lucknow marched through those cities in September 2024. A plant-level stoppage at one of Samsung factories provided a simple way for street protesting by a dozen of the nation's largest unions to object to a wage increase—a new phenomenon mirroring industries' unified complaints.

Even the gig workers complained. Indian Federation of App-based Transport Workers (IFAT), whose drivers drive on Uber and Ola apps, have moved Supreme Court for legal and social security in existing law.

Government's Justification and Progressing Further

The government remains convinced that stability and growth, to be constantly interesting, must be brought about by the new labor program. The regulators' counter reform will bring jobs into existence, greater levels of security, and compliance effortlessly made for everybody.

The policy intellect and ways of thinking by individuals wait for one even today.

While the big-banging union bosses sit around dawdling to negotiate on actual debate and further assurances, Indian labor law in next couple of years' future will be on agenda within next couple of weeks.

War over Workers' Rights India's course on labor reforms has come to a crossroads. State dream of a new era of work on one side; crores of workers cry that they are being denied the economic efficiency war on the other. As trade unions are set against each other in titanic battle, the question of the day is not a question of paper law–but the future of work, dignity, and rights in world's best democracy.