Needed: A common state law for unorganised workers’ social security

The proposed Karnataka Platform-Based Gig Workers’ (Social Security & Welfare) Bill 2024, which was expected to be passed in the last session of the Karnataka legislature, was not passed reportedly due to objections from aggregators, since the Union’s four labour codes are also in the offing. 

This stalling of the gig workers’ Bill may be a fortuitous development as it gives time to rethink the framing of sector-specific laws in Karnataka for social security, like the one for gig workers.

Several similar laws creating sector-specific boards for social security are supposedly in the pipeline for weavers, vendors, etc.

The proposed gig workers’ Bill also contains several provisions for ‘regulating working conditions’ along with social security and welfare, though the title of the Bill does not say so. 

But the experience with the Building & Other Construction Workers’ Welfare Board, for example, has shown that sector-specific boards do not regulate working conditions and occupational safety and health (OS&H) but only provide social security as they lack the manpower and reach at the grassroots level for these tasks.

This is not to deny the need for a separate law for regulating working conditions and OS&H, supplemented by sector-specific provisions, but that needs a separate article. 

Since no unorganised worker, including a platform-based gig worker, works continuously or permanently in one sector, creating sector-specific laws for social security will make portability of registration and benefits across sectors difficult.

Notably, even the Employees’ State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) for organised workers maintains all social security contributions in a single fund and provides the same benefits to all workers, and not on a sector-specific basis. Then why these separate sector-specific boards and funds for unorganised workers’ social security?

In the last few decades, there were three national commissions that looked into the issue of social security for unorganised workers: the National Commission on Rural Labour (1991); the Second National Commission on Labour (2003); and the National Commission on Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector (NCEUS) of 2007.

It is significant that none of them recommended the creation of multiple sector-specific boards and funds for providing social security to unorganised workers.

The NCEUS, for instance, recommended a single National Social Security Board (NSSB), one National Social Security Fund (NSSF), one National Social Security Scheme (NSSS) and single state-level boards and funds. Given such recommendations and also models of composite laws framed by them, it is not understandable why sector-specific laws are still being framed in our state. 

The above national commissions and also the Union government, by enacting the four labour codes in 2020, tried to bring in much-needed integration and rationalisation of multiplicity of laws and schemes that were in existence. But their efforts still failed to bring universality of coverage and benefits.

By again creating sector-specific laws and boards for social security, we will be going back to the era of multiplicity of laws and still fail to universalise social security.

There are more than 1.5 crore unorganised workers in the state. So, how many funds and boards shall we create covering just a few lakh workers under each? There is a need to realistically estimate the number of boards required to cover 1.5-plus crore workers sector-wise, the administrative cost involved, and the time-frame that will be required to cover all unorganised workers in this manner. And the bigger question is whether this pattern of law-making will lead to universalisation of social security at all!

There are adequate laws for organised sector workers in the Union’s Social Security Code of 2020. But since it does not provide anything concrete for unorganised workers, it is a golden opportunity for Karnataka to fill this gap by passing a comprehensive, common state law that will provide universal social security for all unorganised workers of the state.

It is possible for the comprehensive law to have an in-built source of funds — through contributions from employees, cesses on employers and a levy on several state taxes to provide government's contribution — pooled into a common fund for social security covering all workers. 

It is desirable to also delineate within the Act all the nine benefits, or at least a minimum floor of benefits, and their quantum, as per ILO Convention 102 on Social Security.

The ILO had recommended that in India, where more than 93% workers work in the unorganised sector, an ‘area-based approach’ rather than a sector-specific approach was preferable.

It is significant that the Karnataka Labour Department and the German Society for International Cooperation (GlZ) had implemented a pilot project on 'social security benefits for unorganised workers' in six districts of Karnataka from 2009 to 2014, pioneering the concept of such an area-based ‘single-window approach’ to facilitate social security benefits for unorganised workers.

As many as 250 Workers’ Facilitation Centres (WFCs) at gram panchayat and urban ward level were set up.

The above pilot project was directed to be upscaled to all taluks of the state by the Labour Department itself through a GO in 2014. One does not know why this model went into oblivion, but there is a need to revive this model that was piloted in Karnataka on an 'area-based approach’ and not on a sector-specific basis.    

The GO of 2014 also directed establishment of a state-level steering committee, a state-level implementation committee, district-level and taluk-level coordination committees to oversee implementation of social security in an ‘area mode’ instead of a sector-specific mode. 

These were, however, committees with only officials. These can be easily converted into tripartite committees with representation from trade unions and CSOs to enable proximity to all unorganised workers, irrespective of sector, for collective bargaining, enforcement of wages and social security, regulation of working conditions and OS&H and grievance redressal at a local level.

This system can effectively replace the sector-specific approach which cannot provide any of this. 

Can one expect the political will to emerge in Karnataka to revive this ‘area-based approach’ and be a model to the rest of the country by universalising social security to all 1.5 crore unorganised workers?

(The writer is the executive trustee of CIVIC-Bangalore and a member of the Karnataka State Labour Policy Committee)