Fri. Mar 29th, 2024

Union Labour Minister Santosh Gangwar tabled the much-awaited social security code in the parliament on Wednesday. The bill has the provision to empower the government to provide social security to workers engaged in the unorganized sector.

This social security code will assimilate nine central labour acts and will make Aadhaar card mandatory for availing benefits under various social security schemes. The bill will empower the state to set up funds for providing social security to gig, platform, and unorganised workers.

This social security code is a part of larger government exercise to codify 44 labour laws into four broad codes on wages, occupational safety, industrial relations and social security.

After passing the bill from both – upper and lower houses – the gig workers will be covered by this social security law for the first time. The gig workers include those workers who are not bound to any organization and are the part of sharing economy. The jobs provided by tech-platforms like Ola, Uber Zomato etc. come under the gig economy. The population engaged in such tech-platform provided jobs are gig labour.

The Employees’ State Insurance (ESI) law will apply to all those institutions that have at least 10 workers. While in hazardous industries, ESIC coverage will be extended to the establishments having even a single worker.

The bill has an option to allow companies with below 10 workers to provide benefits under ESI schemes.

The government has dropped a proposal to give options to private-sector workers to switch away from the Employees’ Pension Scheme and ESI schemes to other products.

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