Version imprimablePress Release
The following joint statement was released today-21st November 2025 as preliminary reaction from the joint platform of 10 Central Trade Unions
LABOUR CODES NOTIFICATION
A DECEPTIVE FRAUD ON THE WORKING PEOPLE OF THE NATION
JOINT PLATFORM OF TRADE UNIONS CALLS FOR
COMBATIVE RESISTANCE & DEFIANCE ON 26TH NOVEMBER
The Joint Platform of Central Trade Unions, express strong condemnation against the blatantly unilateral implementation of anti-worker, pro employer labour codes from today. In unequivocal terms we call it the Union Govt’s deceptive fraud committed against the working people of the nation.
This arbitrary and undemocratic notification of the four so called " labour codes" notified on 21st November 2025, defies all democratic ethos and has wrecked the character of welfare state of India to rubbles.
The joint platform of ten central trade unions and independent industrial federations have been resisting the implementation of these draconian labour codes since the day they were enacted repealing existing 29 central labour legislations. After the Code on Wages was enacted in 2019 immediate protests were observed culminating in a general strike in January 2020. And once the other three labour codes, Industrial Relations Code, Social Security Code, Occupational Safety, Health & Working Conditions Code were enacted in 2020 September immediate protests were held and historic General Strike on 26 November was observed by the Joint Platform of Trade unions along with historic Delhi Chalo of Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM). Further several joint actions were observed leading to latest July 9th 2025 General Strike in which more than 25 crores of workers had participated.
In-spite of the stiff resistance, the ruling regime in the Union Govt, dizzied with the victory in Bihar elections has felt super empowered to make effective the four labour codes from today as per the media reports and tweets by the Ministry of Labour & Employment. The Central Trade Unions Joint platform had urged to convene the Indian Labour Conference (ILC) immediately and had urged for scrapping of labour codes even in the meeting convened by the Ministry on 13th November on draft Shram Shakti Niti 2025. Even in the pre-budget consultation meeting held on 20th November by the Ministry of Finance it was urged on behalf of Joint platform of Trade Unions to scrap labour codes and convene ILC, which is not been held after 2015. The government remained obstinately unresponsive.
Instead, without heeding to any of the appeals, protests and strikes of the central Trade Unions, this Union government has made effective the labour codes to cater to the demands of employers’ representatives and BMS and other fringe supporters of the Govt made in the pre-budget consultative meeting. The Joint Platform of CTUs while denouncing the move of the Govt as most undemocratic, most regressive -anti worker and pro employer reiterate in strongest terms that the lethal assault on the working people will be confronted with the fiercest and most United resistance in history. The CTUs in one voice term the codes as genocidal attacks on the lives and livelihoods of workers seeking to impose virtual slavery and snatching away every right and entitlements of the workers. The codes, if implemented will extinguish the hopes, faith and aspirations of the entire generations to come.
The Joint Platform of Central Trade Unions and independent industrial federations call the working people of India across the sectors to rise in rage in the joint action of combative resistance and defiance on 26th November 2025 along with the peasants led by Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), against the implementation of labour codes, throughout nation in each and every work place, urging for the scrapping of labour codes and withdrawal of draft Shram Shakti Niti 2025. The United Platform gives out a call to all its members to wear black badges right from now on in the work places to demonstrate defiance. From Monday onwards Gate meetings, street corner meetings, meetings in the bastis etc should be held in war footing to expose the designs of the Union government trying to enslave the whole section of the wealth producers to the profit mongers.
The CTUs send a strong message that the notification of these codes, amidst deepening unemployment crisis, rising inflation is nothing short of declaration of war on the working masses. The Union government in cahoots with its capitalist cronies is attempting to take the country back to the exploitative era of master - servant relationship.
The Platform of Central Trade Unions sends a serious warning to the government that the working people of India will put up a formidable fight till the labour codes are withdrawn.
INTUC AITUC HMS CITU AIUTUC
TUCC SEWA AICCTU LPF UTUC
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Statement from NTUI:
Stand Up against the Unparliamentary Imposition of the Unconstitutional Labour Codes
November 22, 2025
The New Trade Union Initiative (NTUI) deplores the BJP government’s sudden imposition of the deeply undemocratic and unconstitutional four Labour Codes through executive fiat on 21 November 2025. This is an assault not only on working people but an elemental attack on the rule of law with the BJP acting, as it always does, in lockstep with domestic and global capital all for the alleged ‘ease of doing business’.
The Labour Codes violate fundamental rights under our constitution and the constitutional values that govern labour, democracy, and federalism in our country. The codes are structurally flawed, legally unsound, and designed to hollow out workers’ rights.
Violations of Fundamental Rights
1. Violation of Article 14 (Arbitrariness & Unequal Protection)
Arbitrary thresholds for applicability — based on the number of workers— of the codes exclude the majority of India’s workforce in terms of minimum wages, job protection, social security including healthcare and retiral benefits, and workplace disciplinary rules amongst others. The move towards fixed-term employment, dilution of protection to contract labour, removal of workplace safety regulation, and dilution of the inspection system creates unjustifiable discrimination between workers performing the same work within and across establishments. The codes provide a high level of immunity to employers whilst holding workers to account creating gross inequality before law and effectively legalising inequality.
2. Violation of Article 19(1)(c): The Right to Form or join Unions
The Industrial Relations Code imposes unreasonable restrictions on union registration, majority status, and the right to strike. By limiting who can represent workers and by creating near-impossible conditions for lawful strikes as a right of workers to withdraw their labour power, the government violates the constitutional guarantee of freedom of association.
3. Violation of Article 21 & 23: The Right to Life with Dignity and the Right Against Exploitation
Weakening workplace safety provisions, legalising the 12-hour workday by stealth, denying employment security, dismantling the social security mechanisms and creation of a floor wage at a rate below the minimum wage strike at the heart of workers’ right to live with dignity. The Codes permit conditions that undermine health, safety, and livelihood and would advance conditions of forced labour returning workers to conditions of bondage.
4. Attack on Federalism (Articles 246 & 254; Seventh Schedule)
Labour is a subject in the Concurrent List i.e., where in powers are shared between the governments of the union and the states. Yet, the Codes grant the Union Government sweeping powers to frame rules, override existing state laws, and dictate regulatory structures. States have been reduced to mere implementing agencies with virtually no legislative authority. This is a direct assault on the idea of India as a ‘union of states’ and a violation of the distribution of power between the states and the union governments.
5. Excessive Delegation of Legislative Power
The Codes write down exiting rights protected by parliament and convert them to rules to be decided on the free will of the executive—especially the union government—through blanket rule-making powers. The power to decide wage floors, working hours, social security, inspection mechanisms, and thresholds for layoffs has been removed from parliamentary protection and passed on to government. This violates the separation of powers and the principle that essential legislative functions cannot be delegated. The ‘Basic Structure Doctrine’ is not about private property rights. It extends to workers and their rights too.
A Deepening Crisis of Democracy
Invoking executive powers to enforce these Codes having choked debate in Parliament, without consultation with states, in defiance of opposition from workers’ organisations, and the compete abandoning of the tripartite machinery is unparliamentary, unconstitutional, and anti-worker. The government has displayed contempt for the Constitution, contempt for democratic process, and contempt for the working people who built and continue to build this country.
The Labour Codes are not reforms. They are a rollback of nearly a century of struggles—struggles that built workers’ rights into the fabric of our democracy. By pushing these Codes into force through an executive order, the government seeks to bypass democratic resistance and flatten limitations on government imposed by the constitution.
The NTUI rejects the Codes in their entirety.
We reject the method by which they have been imposed.
We reject the government’s attempt to rewrite labour law at the cost of workers’ rights and the Constitution’s federal structure.
The NTUI calls upon all the country’s working class and their trade unions and all other progressive forces to rise in one voice joining the ten central trade union’s countrywide call to action on 26 November 2025. Let no workplace or town or village square fail to hear the voices of united working power. Let this be a start of the struggle, a struggle that shall not stop until the four labour codes are repealed, a struggle that only a united democratic and militant working class power can achieve.
Our rights are not government charity
Our democracy is not the rights of government, it’s the rights of people
Unions United Will Never Be Defeated
Milind Ranade
President
Gautam Mody
General Secretary
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Labour Codes Implementation: Codifying Modern Slavery For “Ease of Business.” - CPI(ML) Liberation statement Nov 21, 2025
The Union Government on November 21 notified the implementation of the four Labour Codes, despite strong opposition from workers and the toiling masses. The four Labour Codes - the Code on Wages, 2019; the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020; the Social Security Code, 2020; and the Industrial Relations Code, 2020 - though presented in the name of “labour reform,” are essentially tools that codify modern slavery and exploitation for the benefit and profiteering of big businesses and corporate interests, all under the banner of “Ease of Doing Business.”
These Codes drastically dilute industrial safety compliance, wage and welfare requirements, and effectively dismantle hard-earned rights of workers, including the right to form associations and take collective action. The thresholds for implementing safety measures and welfare provisions have been raised in favour of business, pushing a large section of the working class into conditions resembling bondage and paving the way for further informalisation and contractualisation of labour. The objective and purpose of the four Labour Codes are not reforms, but to snatch away the rights and safety of workers in the name of facilitating corporate profiteering.
The Labour Codes, along with the recent draft Shram Shakti Niti 2025, reflect the regressive and anti-labour character of the Modi regime, which treats workers and the toiling masses of this country as expendable and attempts to push them into conditions of servitude.
CPI(ML) Liberation calls for the immediate withdrawal of these arbitrary and anti-people Labour Codes, and demands the convening of the Indian Labour Conference (ILC), which has been kept in abeyance by the Modi regime for the past ten years.
We call upon the people to extend their support and join the Day of Resistance and Defiance on 26 November 2025, called by the Joint Platform of Central Trade Unions and independent industrial federations, along with peasants led by the Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), in opposition to the implementation of the Labour Codes and to demand the withdrawal of the draft Shram Shakti Niti 2025.
— Central Committee, CPI(ML) Liberation (November 21, 2025)
source
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Communist Party of India (Marxist)
November 22, 2025
The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has issued the following statement:
Revoke Labour Code
The CPI(M) Polit Bureau strongly opposes the unilateral notification of the four Labour Codes by the BJP-led Central Government.
The Labour Codes dismantle 29 hard-won labour laws that have, till now, protected the workers to some extent. Despite many limitations, to an extent the wages, working hours, social security, industrial safety, inspection–compliance mechanisms, and collective bargaining were in place. Instead of simplification, the new Codes seek to dilute and abolish long-established existing rights and entitlements and shift the balance sharply in favour of employers.
The Government’s claim that the Labour Codes will boost employment and investment is completely baseless. The Codes are designed to leave labour unprotected in the face of the onslaught of capital. Their aim is to lure national and international capital by ensuring that all meaningful regulations covering various aspects of labour rights will be nullified. Further, they seek to snatch away the right to strike and criminalise any collective action by the working class.
The Labour Codes, in totality, seek to establish a jungle raj by unilaterally empowering the corporate class to bulldoze the rights and entitlements of workers with proactive sponsorship of the Government and administration.
The Polit Bureau also condemns the gross obnoxious violation of democratic and federal norms in pushing these Codes without genuine tripartite consultation with the stakeholders, particularly the workers. The Government sidelined trade unions throughout the process and rushed the legislation through Parliament without debate. Rather, the Government arrogantly rejected the valid objections to the Labour Codes based on irrefutable arguments and concrete documentary evidence.
The CPI(M) calls for the immediate withdrawal of the Labour Codes and urges all trade unions and democratic forces to build united struggles to resist the authoritarian design of the Government and defend the rights and entitlements of the working people, and their struggle for more comprehensive labour rights and protections.
