New Delhi, Trade unions, farmers’ organisations and electricity engineers staged co-ordinated protests across India on Wednesday in one of the largest shows of industrial unrest since the passage of controversial labour reforms.
The demonstrations, held in more than 500 districts, were called by a joint platform of ten central trade unions, the Samyukt Kisan Morcha farmers’ umbrella group and the All India Power Engineers Federation. Organisers claimed participation running into several lakhs.
The immediate trigger was the central government’s decision, announced last Friday, to notify all four Labour Codes that consolidate 29 existing labour statutes. First enacted by Parliament in 2019 and 2020, the codes had remained in abeyance pending state-level rule-making.
Union leaders delivered a memorandum to President Droupadi Murmu demanding the “immediate repeal” of the legislation, which they described as “anti-worker”. They argue that the new framework curtails the right to strike, complicates trade-union registration and recognition, replaces labour courts with tribunals, and grants excessive discretionary powers to registrars.
The government counters that the codes represent the most ambitious overhaul of India’s labour regime in decades, extending social security to gig and platform workers, mandating written appointment letters, guaranteeing statutory minimum wages and ensuring timely salary payments across formal and informal sectors.
In a separate but linked grievance, power-sector employees protested against the pending Electricity (Amendment) Bill, which they fear will accelerate privatisation by permitting multiple private distribution licensees to use existing government-owned networks.
Amarjeet Kaur, general secretary of the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), said the protests drew workers from both organised and unorganised sectors. Shailendra Dubey, chairman of the All India Power Engineers Federation, warned that the power-sector reforms would undermine public discoms and threaten energy security.
The protests come at a delicate moment for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration, which has prioritised labour-market and infrastructure reform to lift India’s global ease-of-doing-business rankings and attract foreign capital. Employers’ bodies have broadly welcomed the codes, arguing that the previous patchwork of laws deterred investment and formal job creation.
No official comment was immediately available from the Ministry of Labour and Employment on Wednesday evening.
