Daijiworld Media Network - Chennai
Chennai, Nov 23: Four major Left and progressive parties — the CPM, CPI, VCK and CPI(ML) Liberation — have sharply criticised the Union government’s new labour codes, calling them a sweeping attack on workers’ rights and a major setback to India’s labour movement.
In a joint statement issued on Sunday, CPM state secretary P. Shanmugam, CPI state secretary M. Veerapandian, VCK president Thol Thirumavalavan and CPI(ML) Liberation state secretary Pazha Asaithambi urged workers, trade unions and the general public to participate in statewide protests on December 8. The demand: the immediate rollback of the labour codes.
The parties said the Union government had replaced 29 long-standing labour laws with four consolidated codes — on Wages, Industrial Relations, Occupational Safety and Social Security. They described the move as a corporate-driven reform aligned with the ruling establishment’s Hindutva agenda.
According to the statement, the new system dismantles crucial protections won through more than a century of worker struggles, undermining wage security, job stability and social welfare. The leaders accused the Centre of pushing the codes through during the Covid-19 lockdown — a time of national distress — in what they described as an undemocratic effort that favoured corporate interests.
The parties warned that the codes grant employers excessive powers. Raising the threshold for prior government approval to shut down units from 100 workers to 300, they said, effectively strips a majority of workers of essential legal safeguards. They also criticised the redefinition of worker categories, calling the government’s claim of extending benefits to unorganised workers “baseless”.
Fixed-term employment provisions, they added, would pave the way for temporary contracts replacing permanent jobs, while weakened social security norms and reduced regulatory oversight would heighten exploitation across sectors.
The statement also flagged threats to fundamental trade union rights, including organising and striking. The leaders argued that the government’s focus on boosting “investor confidence” serves only corporate profits, pointing to the rise in India’s dollar billionaire count — from 70 in 2014 to 358 in 2025 — even as unemployment worsened.
Citing the yearly migration of nearly 11 crore workers in search of livelihoods, they said soaring inequality could no longer be ignored. They further noted that Tamil Nadu, Kerala and several other non-BJP-ruled states have yet to frame rules for implementing the labour codes, accusing the Centre of sidelining state concerns and violating federal principles.
Calling for mass mobilisation, the Left parties and VCK urged workers and citizens to join district-level demonstrations on December 8 to defend labour protections and resist what they labelled an “anti-worker, pro-corporate” overhaul of India’s labour laws.