Four-Day Work Week: In India, the four-day work week may soon become a reality. The central government is likely to implement the four new labour codes on wages, social security, industrial relations and occupation safety, health and working conditions, according to a report. This will be done by the fiscal year beginning 2022, the report quoting a senior government official suggested. Under the new rules, employees across India are likely to get three days’ leave each week and work for four days, among others. The Centre has already finalised the rules under these codes and now states are required to frame regulations on their part as labour is a concurrent subject, said the report.
If the new rules are to be implemented, the work culture in general will change in the country. Besides the number of weekdays, the take home salary of an employee as well as his or her working hours are likely to see a change. As opposed to the current five-day work week, employees might enjoy a four-day work week with three days off from the next fiscal if the report by news agency PTI is to be believed.
“The four labour codes are likely to be implemented in the next financial year of 2022-23 as a large number of states have finalised draft rules on these. The Centre has completed the process of finalising the draft rules on these codes in February 2021. But since labour is a concurrent subject, the Centre wants the states to implement these as well in one go,” said the senior government official, as per PTI.
Union Labour Minister Bhupender Yadav in a reply to the Rajya Sabha last week had said that the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code is the only code on which the least number of 13 states have pre-published the draft rules.
The report added that as many as 13 states have pre-published draft rules on The Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code. These are Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Arunachal Pradesh, Haryana, Jharkhand, Punjab, Manipur, Bihar, Himachal Pradesh and UT of Jammu and Kashmir.
As per a Hindustan Times report citing experts who are assessing the new labour codes, the take home salary of employees are also going to decrease. This is because these laws are going to change how the provident fund is calculated. This will reportedly prescribe that allowances cannot be more than 50 per cent of the total salary, meaning the basic pay has to be 50 per cent or more of total pay. Normally, employers keep the non-allowance part of the salary below 50 per cent, resulting in high in-hand pay for employees. However, once the changes are brought in, employers are required to increase the basic pay of employees. This will result in reduced take-home salaries because of rise in gratuity payments and employees’ contribution to the provident fund.
The central government has notified four labour codes, namely, the Code on Wages, 2019, on August 8, 2019, and the Industrial Relations Code, 2020, the Code on Social Security, 2020, and the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 on September 29, 2020. However, the Centre as well as states are required to notify rules under the four codes to enforce these laws in respective jurisdictions. Under the Codes, the power to make rules has been entrusted to the Central Government, State Government and appropriate Government and there is a requirement of publication of Rules in their official Gazette for a period of 30 or 45 days for public consultation.
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