Labour rights, health of workers hit in the name of “reform”: PUCL Maharashtra

Expressing deep concern at the Maharashtra cabinet’s recent decision to “reform” labour laws, the Maharashtra unit of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) has, in a statement called the proposed changes highly regressive and a clear attack on labour rights. If legislated and implemented, this decision will be disastrous for working people in the state – shrinking the organised workforce and rolling back labour protections to the exploitative norms of the colonial era.

On September 3, 2025 the Maharashtra Cabinet approved a series of labour law amendments to increase the length of the working day, working hours without rest intervals, working hours per week, and limit of the overtime period. These amendments are based on recommendations of a central task force on labour reforms in order to “attract investment, expand industries, and create more employment opportunities.” The Maharashtra decision aligns with states such as Karnataka, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, and Tripura – which have already enacted similar “reforms.”

The PUCL statement states that it must not be forgotten that the State is the biggest employer both in industries and establishments and is therefore required to ensure that workers are not exploited and their fundamental rights to a decent, safe and healthy work environment are protected. Yet it fails to do precisely that.

The State Government has made many lofty claims in support of these “reforms,” that are presumably in the interests of both labour as well as capital. The amendments will facilitate “protection of labour rights” while “improving the ease of doing business.” They will help “attract investment” as well as “increase employment opportunities in the state.”¹ But it is obvious that extending working hours, and removing smaller establishments from the purview of the law is meant to reduce or remove protections for workers, not to expand them, says the PUCL.

Today, even in the industrial sector in India, contractual workers are already working 12-hour shifts (without overtime). In effect, the amendments aim to legalise what is already happening in fact – depriving workers of the legal safeguards against super-exploitation. They seem to be a way of coercing a shrinking permanent workforce into this inhuman work regime. Besides, far from increasing employment, as is claimed, this step will reduce the organised work force to two thirds of its size by replacing 8-hour shifts with 12-hour ones. It is no surprise that the Karnataka State IT/ITeS

1 See the post by the Chief Minster of Maharashtra on the social media platform X:

Employees Union (KITU) labelled similar amendments proposed in Karnataka as “inhuman attempt to impose modern-day slavery” upon them.²

In line with the state cabinet’s decision, the proposed amendments will be carried out in the Factories Act of 1948 and the Maharashtra Shops and Establishments (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 2017. In the Factories Act, the amendments proposed are: (a) Under Section 65, the workday shall be extended from the present 9 hours up to 12 hours; (b) Under Section 55, the rest period which was half an hour after the first five hours shall be made half an hour after six hours; (c) Under Section 56, the maximum number of working hours (spread over) in a day from 10.5 hours to 12 hours; (d) Under Section 65, the maximum number of hours of overtime in a quarter shall be increased from the present 115 to 144 hours (the original limit had been laid down as 75 hours). Under the Shops and Establishments Act the government intends to (a) increase working hours from 9 to 10 hours; (b) exclude establishments having less than 20 workers (the current number of 85 lakh establishments covered by this Act will be reduced to about 56,000).

While the State Labour Secretary has claimed that overtime work will be paid at double the rate of basic wages and allowances for every such increase in working hours, and that such overtime shall be subject to worker’s consent, these assurances have to be tested upon the actual language of the proposed amendments, particularly the fine print. While the decisions have yet to take the shape of a bill/ordinance for amending the Factories Act in the state, it is very likely that the amending bill/ordinance shall be on the lines of similar amendments made in Rajasthan and Gujarat.

In the Gujarat Ordinance No. 2 of 2025, issued on July 1, 2025, for instance, at Section 6, it is stated that Section 59(1) of the Factories Act shall be substituted by:

“Where a worker works in any factory:-

• for more than nine hours in any day or for more than forty-eight hours in any week, working for six days in any week;
• for more than ten hours in any day or for more than forty eight hours in any week, working for five days in any week;
• for more than eleven and a half hours in any day working for four days in any week, or works on paid holidays; he shall in respect of overtime work be entitled to wages at the rate of twice his ordinary rate of wages.”

In effect this means that overtime will not be calculated on a daily basis, but on a weekly basis, and a worker may work for eleven and a half hours each day for four days in a week without being eligible for overtime. This amounts to squeezing out the maximum from workers, and if they do not consent to overtime, subjecting them to artificial breaks in service jeopardising their permanent status.

The Rajasthan Bill contains another dangerous clause, namely 6(v):

“A worker may be required to work for overtime subject to the consent of such worker for such work except worker required to work for safety activities.”

 2 See the statement “12-hour work day in Karnataka’s IT Sector; Modern-Day Slavery in the Making: KITU Urges Employees to Unite and Resist” by the Karnataka State IT/ITeS Employees Union
https://kituhq.org/recent/6836e0f7e83575020247d3d1

Thus, a maintenance worker may be forced to work overtime all the year round. Given the current situation in the country of a large informal sector, underemployment, low wages, and unpaid work – workers will give “consent” out of fear or desperation, not choice. The provision of “consent” will be little more than legal subterfuge to conceal a new form of servitude.

It is a serious concern that while average working hours in wealthy countries have reduced by roughly half over the last 150 years – moving from over 50 hours per week to around 25-35 hours per week in recent times – India is reverting to colonial era standards by increasing working hours. In France, for instance, the standard full-time work week is 35 hours, with a daily cap of 10 hours; hours beyond the 35 hour threshold are considered overtime.

Finally, the PUCL statement states that the working class all over the world has fought a long battle to establish its right to an 8- hour working day so that workers may also have 8 hours of rest and 8 hours of personal time in which to achieve their full potential as citizens and as human beings. It must be recalled that the International Workers Day originates from the demand for an eight hour working day. Labour Day commemorates the sacrifice of union organisers – who were framed after the Haymarket protest on false charges of causing a riot – during a strike and demonstrations of Chicago workers in 1886. It has origins in the American Federation of Labour’s call: “eight hours shall constitute a legal day’s labour from and after May 1st, 1886”. After the International Labour Organisation (ILO) was founded in 1919, the first instrument ratified by it was the one regulating working hours. The second article limited working hours to 8 hours per day and 48 hours per week. India was one of the first signatories of the ILO’s “Hours of Work Convention” in 1921. India has itself witnessed valiant struggles of textile workers in the year 1911 to reduce working hours which finally under the pen of Dr B.R. Ambedkar were enshrined in the Factories Act, 1948 in the form of the 8-hour work day. The government’s decision in effect seeks to extinguish in one stroke the rights that working people have won with great sacrifice and struggle over more than a century.

It is widely acknowledged that long hours of work does not increase worker productivity, on the contrary, they drastically increase incidents of workplace accidents. Such long hours of work can only lead to sweat labour and hazardous work conditions. It will adversely impact health of workers by increasing exhaustion and stress, and increase their exposure to occupation-linked diseases and medical conditions. It is equally well known that workers in establishments with 12- hour shifts are rarely able to unionise. Longer working hours are discriminatory towards women workers because women bear a significant burden of care work in their homes. If the government was serious about increasing productivity, employment opportunities and welfare of workers, they would introduce progressive amendments to reduce working hours without any reduction in wages.

The PUCL Maharashtra has therefore demanded that the full texts of the proposed amendments be made available in the public domain in both in Marathi and English, and in all offices of the Labour Department so that trade unions and organisations can scrutinise the fine print of these so- called “reforms.” We demand that this decision to amend the Factories Act and the Shop and Establishments Act along the lines of other state governments be immediately revoked. Any proposed labour reforms in the state must only be considered after a series of consultations with trade unions and workers’ organisations, after which they ought to be opened to the broader public for suggestions and objections.

The PUCL, has also stated that the organization, in alliance with trade unions and informal sector workers organisations will campaign against the extension of work hours. It will also lobby with the Standing Committee in the Legislative Assembly and with opposition party MLAs to not accept these changes, and if required challenge these amendments in the courts. The statement was issued by Shiraz Bulsara Prabhu, President of PUCL, Maharashtra and   Sandhya Gokhale, General Secretary.

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