Measuring the Gap Between Labour Laws and Work in India’s IT Industry and Policy Directions
- 25 Downloads
Abstract
Labour market institutions play a pivotal role in the formation and implementation of laws and regulations to protect the worker’s rights and interests. Ironically, as most of them are applicable only to organized form of employment, majority of the workers are devoid of their benefits. In India, workers of the Information Technology (IT) industry, which represents one of the most sophisticated forms of workplace, also do not benefit from the many labour laws due to the exemption of the industry from applicability of few welfare-oriented labour laws. This paper examines the nature of labour regulations in India and their prospective applicability to the IT industry. A second objective is to investigate conditions of work in the industry using the concept of decent work and discuss their variation across gender and other socio-demographic characteristics. Data has been collected from 272 IT employees using snowball sampling method and the results have been used to discuss the deficiencies in the work conditions despite the existing labour regulations.
Keywords
Information technology Labour laws Regulations Decent work WorkNotes
Acknowledgements
The author is thankful to Professor Subesh K Das and Dr. Shyam Sundar for their valuable comments on the paper presented at the 58th Annual conference of Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE) at Guwahati, 2016 and ISLE and Institute for Human Development (IHD), Delhi for the opportunity to present her work at the conference and accepting it for publication. She is also thankful to her mentor Professor Narayan Prasad for his valuable inputs.
References
- Babu G., S. Shinde and M. Srivastava (2016), “Tamil Nadu allows unions in information technology sector”, Business Standard, June 9 2017; available at http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/tamil-nadu-allows-unions-in-information-technology-sector-116060900052_1.html, accessed on 7 September 2016.
- Bist, N. (2010), “Trade unions in IT industry? An employee’s perspective”, Indian Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 46, No. 2, pp. 220–228; available at http://www.freepatentsonline.com/article/Indian-Journal-Industrial-Relations/252555260.html, accessed on 6 September 2016.
- Nizami, N. (2013), “Decent Work: Concept, Measurement and Status in India”, PhD Thesis, IGNOU, New Delhi.Google Scholar
- Padhi, P.K. (2011), Labour and Industrial Laws. Second Edition, PHI Learning Private Limited, New Delhi.Google Scholar
- Sarkar, S. (2008), “Trade Unionism in Indian BPO-ITeS industry: Insights from Literature”, Indian Journal of Labour Economics. Vol. 51, No. 4, pp.1053–1064.Google Scholar