Can India’s labour codes protect migrant workers?

In a push towards informality, they risk weakening oversight and provisions of recourse for the workers

The newly enforced labour codes have left one of the largest segments of India’s labour force, inter-state migrant workers, inadequately protected. Although the codes promise better safety and working conditions for workers, they do little to safeguard the inter-state migrant workers (hereafter ISMWs). ISMWs are one of the most at-risk groups and are highly susceptible to exploitation, and the Codes further weaken their bargaining power and dilute their protection mechanisms.

Their vulnerability was starkly visible during the COVID-19 lockdown, when lakhs of ISMWs walked back to their home states due to the precarious nature of their employment and lack of protection mechanisms in the labour laws. The labour law codification exercise was a crucial opportunity to course-correct this policy gap and better regulate their employment and working conditions. However, this ‘footloose’ workforce of India’s economy is pushed further into informality, rendering them even more invisible.

The four labour codes were passed between 2019 and 2020, and enforced in November 2025. The response by stakeholders has been predictable. Business and industry associations have welcomed the increased flexibility in recruitment and employment. Trade unions, on the other hand, have opposed the reforms. They have been conducting nationwide protests, arguing that the Codes erode the rights of workers who will lose hard-won protections. The confrontation between a reformist move by the State and a dissenting labour movement is now public and escalating.

The regulation of employment and working conditions of ISMWs falls under the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 (‘Code’). ISMWs are heavily concentrated in unregulated and informal ones, such as construction, brick kilns, small manufacturing units, and urban services. Work in these sectors is precarious, hazardous, and relies heavily on coercive and unfree labour practices. The thin line between safe and unsafe migration exposes them to trafficking and bondage.

The government’s claim that the labour codes expand coverage for workers must therefore be tested against a fundamental question: do they meaningfully protect this vulnerable workforce?

Before the Codes, the only law that regulated the employment and working conditions of ISMWs was the Inter-State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1979 (‘Act’). However, it remained a dead letter ever since. Stakeholders, as well as the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Labour, lamented its ineffectiveness, citing negligible registration and lack of enforcement. Clearly, a reform was long overdue.

Unlike the Act, which covered only ISMWs recruited through licensed contractors, the OSH Code, into which the Act is subsumed, broadens the definition of an inter-state migrant worker by including those who migrate by themselves. However, this expanded definition may not lead to wider applicability.

The Act applied to establishments employing five or more ISMWs. The Code raises this threshold to ten or more. This change has serious consequences. Most worksites employing ISMWs (for instance, brick kilns, small construction units, textile workshops, food-processing units) employ fewer than ten of them. More than 98.4% of establishments in the non-agricultural sector employ less than 10 workers as per the Sixth Economic Census (2016). This statistic includes all kinds of workers, not just ISMWs. The proportion of establishments employing ten or more ISMWs is therefore a minuscule fraction of those establishments that employ 10 workers of any category. In reality, well over 99% of non-agricultural establishments fall outside the Code’s purview.

Reform without regulation

The accountability of the State to protect ISMWs has been diluted in three ways. First, while contractors remain central to labour recruitment, their licensing regime has been substantially weakened. Under the Act, contractors were required to disclose detailed information in their licences about workers, including wages, hours of work, and terms of employment. The OSH Code, however, requires only the number of migrant workers employed to be disclosed, and allows temporary, work-specific licences with minimal scrutiny. This dilution reduces transparency, weakens regulation, and makes it harder for workers to establish exploitation or hold intermediaries accountable.

Second, the OSH Code removes the worker passbook, a mandatory requirement under the Act. As a tool of practical accountability, the passbook recorded the employer’s name, wage rate, and duration of employment, and was the only documentary proof available to migrant workers facing wage theft or disputes. In a labour market with hardly any written contracts and limited legal recourse, the elimination of this record further weakens the bargaining power of ISMWs.

Third, the nature of inspections has been fundamentally altered. The Act empowered inspectors to examine whether any establishment had employed ISMWs and enforce migrant-specific protections. The OSH Code omits such targeted powers. This changing nature of inspections risks leaving ISMWs at worksites with even less oversight.

During the peak of the COVID lockdown-led mobility crisis, faced by lakhs of migrant workers, we were confronted with the reality of their foundational importance in our economy and society. There has clearly been a lack of regulation of work and employment for the migrant workers in the policies by the government.

Any new labour law regime that fails to learn that lesson risks repeating history.

The government argues that this shift in regulation will boost investment and employment. But ease of doing business must not come at the expense of workers. The labour law regime is shifting from protection to facilitation, whittling away important regulatory checks for migrant workers. Rather than formalising informal work, they risk informalising what little protection previously existed.

The success of these reforms will be measured by whether the migrant workers who build India’s cities, industries, and infrastructure can work with security, safety, and recourse. India’s labour law reform will remain incomplete if migrant workers are left unprotected.

Ishaan is a senior resident fellow with Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy; Kunal is a PhD Scholar at ISI-Bangalore and IIT-Hyderabad

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.)