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The Supreme Court’s Remarks on Trade Unions Are Not in Conformity with the Constitution

Dinkar Kapoor

During the hearing of a petition filed in the Supreme Court seeking minimum wages for domestic workers and the right to a comprehensive central law, Chief Justice Suryakant remarked that one should see how many industrial institutions in the country have shut down because of trade unions. He stated that traditional industries were shut down due to “flag-bearing” unions, that they do not want to work, and that trade union leaders are largely responsible for obstructing the country’s industrial development.

According to a Bar and Bench report, he also stated that if minimum wages are not made mandatory, it would violate domestic workers’ rights to equality, non-discrimination, and fair employment (Articles 14, 15, and 16). However, he added that excessively active trade unions could ultimately leave these workers in a helpless situation.

The truth, however, is exactly the opposite. We would like to clarify this reality through an example from our own life. After studying at Allahabad University, we began working with the All India Central Council of Trade Unions. This work was primarily among textile workers, especially in two major sectors: the National Textile Corporation (NTC) and the State Textile Corporation (STC), as well as cooperative textile mills in Uttar Pradesh.

These industries were shut down in the 1990s by the government to enrich Dhirubhai Ambani’s company, Reliance. Many people would be surprised to know that in Kanpur—where there were a large number of government-owned textile mills and which was known as the “Manchester of India”—workers were made to sit idle and paid salaries for 12 years without a single unit of production taking place. Because of our leadership role in that movement, during several negotiations the management clearly told us that the government had no intention of running these factories, and therefore nothing could be done.

In fact, the new economic and industrial policies introduced in 1991—policies that are being further intensified today—marked the beginning of a shift from industrial capitalism to financial capitalism. Under these policies, the government consciously adopted a strategy of shutting down, selling off, and dismantling public sector industries. Trade unions were actually struggling to save these industries. If the industry itself ceases to exist, where will the worker’s existence remain? Therefore, the Chief Justice’s remarks are far removed from reality.

As far as constitutional principles are concerned, the Preamble of the Indian Constitution guarantees social, economic, and political justice to every citizen. From Fundamental Rights to the Directive Principles of State Policy, this commitment is clearly laid out. Article 19(1)(c) of the Constitution grants every citizen the right to form associations. The same Article also provides freedom of expression. Article 21 guarantees every citizen the right to a life with dignity. A dignified life can only be ensured when the government provides dignified wages and social security.

The Directive Principles under Articles 38, 39, 41, 42, and 43 ensure that the State will function as a welfare state and build a social order aimed at public welfare. They mandate efforts to eliminate inequality, provide adequate means of livelihood to all citizens—men and women alike—ensure equal pay, prevent concentration of wealth, guarantee pensions in old age, ensure living wages, a decent standard of life, full enjoyment of leisure, humane working conditions, and access to social and cultural opportunities. Article 14 of the Constitution guarantees the right to equality. The Supreme Court’s present position entirely negates this constitutional framework.

It is also noteworthy that the International Labour Organization’s Convention No. 189, adopted in 2011 on domestic workers—and signed by the Government of India—clearly states that laws must be enacted to ensure minimum wages, social security, and improved living standards for domestic workers. Delivering a position contrary to this is inconsistent with India’s international legal commitments. It is also important that states like Maharashtra already have laws for domestic workers, and these have not led to household disputes, as the Chief Justice has suggested.

In the current period, when the government has abolished all pro-worker laws by introducing labour codes, even referring to the Unorganised Workers’ Social Security Act of 2008 is inappropriate. The reality is that the responsibilities imposed on the central and state governments under this Act—to provide old-age pensions, free medical treatment, death insurance, housing facilities, and education for workers’ children—were never fulfilled. The Supreme Court itself has repeatedly issued orders regarding its implementation.

In reality, the labour codes have taken away even the minimum social security that unorganised sector workers earlier had. These labour codes contain three major provisions that will have the most severe impact on workers’ lives. First, working hours have been extended to 12 hours, undoing the 200-year-long struggle that secured the eight-hour workday. Second, the earlier minimum wage—calculated to sustain a husband, wife, and two children—has been abolished and replaced with a new concept of “floor-level wage,” which is even lower than the minimum wage.

For the past 20 years, permanent employment has been systematically dismantled, and contract labour has been imposed from Rashtrapati Bhavan to the lowest levels, exploiting workers’ compulsions. Contract workers were paid significantly lower wages than permanent workers, but they still had some social security provisions like EPF and ESI, along with certain workplace facilities. With the introduction of fixed-term employment under the new labour codes, workers will be subjected to conditions even worse than contract labour, where there will be no social security at all.

In conclusion, the Chief Justice’s remarks on trade unions are unacceptable and not in accordance with the rights guaranteed by the Constitution. What was needed was a sensitive and empathetic hearing by the judiciary of the voices and suffering of workers. Instead, after this Supreme Court decision, workers will face increased exploitation, and their trust in the judiciary will diminish—something that is not healthy for democracy.

Nevertheless, workers across the country are going on a national strike on 12 February, and it is hoped that this strike will be successful and will send a strong political message.

[Dinkar Kapoor, State General Secretary, All India People’s Front. Courtesy: Countercurrents.org, an India-based news, views and analysis website, that describes itself as non-partisan and taking “the Side of the People!” It is edited by Binu Mathew.]

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Domestic Workers, Women’s Labour, and the Language of the Courts

Rama Sundari

The observations made by the Bench comprising the Chief Justice of India, Suryakant, and Justice Joymalya Bagchi, while hearing a public interest litigation filed by the Penn Thozhilargal Sangam and other organisations seeking welfare measures for domestic workers, are unscientific and narrow-minded. It is unfortunate that remarks resembling the chatter of uninformed laypersons sitting on village platforms had to be heard from the country’s highest constitutional court.

The Chief Justice remarked: “In the intention to bring in a non-discriminatory system through law, we often unknowingly create conditions that lead to greater exploitation. If minimum wages are fixed, people will hesitate to offer employment. This will lead to more hardship. This is a demand-supply issue.” He went further to cast suspicion on, and demean, trade unions by dismissively calling them “flag unions” and accusing them of being responsible for disrupting national development.

In India, the overwhelming majority of domestic workers are women. The work they do constitutes the foundational labour that sustains the daily lives of families. Yet, even today, this labour has not been recognised as “work.” When demands are raised for minimum wages, weekly holidays, and social security, the language emerging even from the courts has been bizarre. Warnings such as “every household will turn into a legal battleground” have been voiced. The Supreme Court’s reluctance to even examine the demand for minimum wages for domestic workers reflects an entrenched mindset that continues to confine this labour within the realm of familial charity. The argument advanced by the Court that “they are like members of our family” is, in reality, an ideology that substitutes rights with benevolence. The notion that those considered part of the family do not require wages flows directly from a patriarchal worldview that naturalises women’s labour.

To argue that employment will shrink if minimum wages are implemented is to weigh women’s labour rights against market anxieties. This pushes fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution—such as the right to live with dignity (Article 21) and the prohibition of forced labour (Article 23)—beneath considerations of economic convenience. The language of “demand and supply” reduces domestic workers from workers to mere commodities. It is deeply ironic that courts meant to bow before the Constitution end up discarding its foundational principles.

Further, while domestic workers have the right to organise through trade unions, the Court’s suspicious view of such collective strength is also telling. The portrayal of women’s collective voices as “obstacles” or “excessive” is nothing new. At the same time, citing exploitation by private agencies and intermediaries as a reason to deny the need for unions is akin to burning down a house because there are rats in it. These appear to be excuses employed by constitutional institutions to abdicate their responsibility to ensure that systems function justly.

The Chief Justice also spoke of trust and human relationships in the context of domestic work. It must be recognised that trust is not a substitute for wages. The argument that rights are unnecessary where trust exists only entrenches inequality. It is precisely because labour is not valued that domestic workers face extreme exploitation. While courts may be technically correct in stating that providing minimum wages, social security, and legal protections to domestic workers falls within the legislative domain of state assemblies, this does not absolve the judiciary of responsibility. When laws are absent and rights are denied, courts too bear the duty of advancing constitutional values.

There is an urgent need to stop viewing women’s labour as “informal,” “private,” or a “family matter,” and instead recognise it as a question of democratic rights. Granting rights to domestic workers does not, in any way, turn every household into a crime scene. It is merely a step towards making every household more just.

[Rama Sundari is with Progressives Organisation for Women (Vice President of its Andhra unit) and Working Editor of Matruka, monthly magazine. Courtesy: Countercurrents.org, an India-based news, views and analysis website, that describes itself as non-partisan and taking “the Side of the People!” It is edited by Binu Mathew.]

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Incinerated in the Name of Growth: The Price of India’s War on Trade Unions

Suman Nath

The perception that trade unions are detrimental to industrial growth, and then the growth of the nation, is quite common in India.

The Chief Justice of India Surya Kant’s recent remark that links industrial underperformance with trade union activity is just a reflection of that general perception.

The decline of trade unionism in India, particularly in its erstwhile stronghold of West Bengal, is not a natural economic evolution but a deliberate political project. The historical strength of unions in sectors like jute and tea once provided a robust mechanism for worker rights. However, over the past decades, the very concept of unionisation has been demeaned as “industrial sabotage.”

The national unionisation rate has plummeted to a mere 6.3%, with a marginal 1.8% in the private sector. The weakening of unions has direct consequences not just for job safety but also for workers’ physical safety. For example, a unionised shop floor is one where workers can collectively demand fire audits and safety gear without the fear of immediate termination.

It is in this context that we need to see the devastating inferno that tore through a warehouse complex in the Nazirabad area of Anandapur in Kolkata on January 26. The charred remains of 29 people have so far been recovered, many so badly burned that DNA testing became the only viable path for identification. This tragedy serves as the terminal point of a trajectory defined by the bypassing of factory regulations, the exploitation of a surplus labour force, and a political environment that has branded worker protections as an archaic, damaging “leftist” relic.

The company’s subsequent offer of Rs 10 lakh as compensation to some, is a post-facto settlement that acknowledges the price of a life while avoiding the structural reforms that a union would have mandated.

The anatomy of regulatory evasion

The Anandapur fire was a disaster of choice and comes amidst rising concern over cost optimisation at the expense of human life.

Investigations following the blaze revealed that the warehouse of a momo chain Wow! Momo, along with an adjoining decorator’s godown, had been operating without a mandatory fire licence and possessed no formal fire safety clearances. This evasion of the law is facilitated by the strategic placement of industrial units in “grey zones.” The Nazirabad area is part of the East Kolkata Wetlands. Operating in such ecologically sensitive areas often involves secret deals with law-enforcing institutions, despite it being widely known that such factories cannot exist on such eco-sensitive zones.

The presence of highly combustible packaging materials and food supplies meant that once a fire started the warehouse became a furnace. For a company as big as Wow! Momo, the absence of basic fire safety is indicative of a business model that prioritises brand optics over operational ethics. The 23 fire extinguishers on-site was quite plausibly incapable of dealing with the fire in the absence of structural safety measures.

Labour overflow as a catalyst for rule-bypassing

The ability to maintain such hazardous work environments is fundamentally enabled by the crushing overflow of labour in West Bengal and India at large. The state’s industrial landscape is characterised by labour informality, which leaves the labourers entirely outside the protection of formal labour laws. This surplus of desperate and often migrant labour creates a dynamic where the individual worker is perceived as replaceable.

In a labour-surplus economy, the minimum wage at which one would accept a work is always in a downward spiral. This results in labour arbitrage, where companies often keep on squeezing the costs of labour as a valid mechanism to compete with their products in the market. When a warehouse is packed with workers sleeping on-site, the company effectively captures 24 hours of the worker’s presence without providing the requisite housing or safety infrastructure.

The overflow of labour acts as a buffer against regulation. For example, if one group of workers complains about the lack of a fire exit, there are hundreds of others waiting at the gate, driven by an average household income that hovers around a mere Rs 11,015 per month.

This reservoir of the dispossessed allows companies to bypass factory rules. In West Bengal, economic stagnation is so profound that the growth rate of net fixed capital in the formal sector was recorded at a staggering negative 147% between 2011 and 2017. In such a desperate climate, any entity that provides even the most precarious of jobs is treated as a benefactor rather than a regulated employer.

Crony capitalism and the startup hero narrative

The rise of startups illustrates the fusion of the startup hero mythos with the mechanisms of modern Indian crony capitalism.

Institutional proximity to power provides a halo effect that shields their operations from the scrutiny that a smaller, less “connected” business would face. Crony capitalism in the 21st-century Indian context manifests as the state’s promotion of national champions. Consequently, businesses get preferential treatment in policy frameworks and environmental clearances under the guise of national growth. The disconnect between the billionaire lifestyle of the startup elite and the reality of their workers is glaring.

One of the most successful psychological manoeuvres of neoliberal capitalism in India has been the framing of worker rights and labour protections as “Left-party propaganda.” In West Bengal, this is particularly potent. The 34-year rule of the Left Front is constantly invoked as a period of “industrial decay caused by militant unionism.” This historically constructed memory is weaponised to suggest that any demand for safety or fair wages is an attempt to bring back the “dark days” of industrial stagnation. This sentiment has been carefully cultivated among the middle class. Consequently, when a tragedy like the Anandapur fire occurs, the discourse is quickly steered away from labour rights toward “accident” or “bad luck.” The reality, however, is that the “Shining India” and “Vibrant Bengal” narratives have entrenched a “K-shaped” growth model. In this model, corporate profits grow by over 22% annually, while employment increases by only 1.5%. The top 1% of the population now owns 40% of the national wealth, a historical high that exceeds inequality levels in the US or Brazil.

Furthermore, the Wow! Momo issue cannot be divorced from the broader gig economy model that underpins its delivery success. The transition from “employee” to “partner” is the ultimate sleight of hand in modern capitalism. By classifying workers as independent contractors, companies bypass almost every social security obligation. While one-third work over 14 hours per day, their needs are hardly met, making them frequently the people having no other option.

The gig model is critical to capitalism because it effectively creates a “just-in-time” labour force that can be switched off during a strike or a slowdown. During delivery strikes, platforms simply increase incentives to break worker solidarity, using data and algorithms to identify which workers are most desperate. The human cost of this flexibility is seen in the high rates of anxiety, physical exhaustion, and the absence of any long-term financial security for the millions of young Indians entering this workforce.

The choice of the Anandapur wetlands for a warehouse is a metaphor for the broader tragedy of the commons in India. The wetlands have been the kidneys for the city, yet they are being steadily encroached upon by real estate and industrial interests. This encroachment is often facilitated by local promoters who act as intermediaries for big capital.

When Wow! Momo leases a facility in such an area; it is participating in the destruction of the city’s ecological safety net. The fire in the wetlands was not just a fire in a building. It was an assault on an ecologically sensitive site that should never have been built on. The lack of fire safety is thus a secondary crime to the primary crime of illegal construction. By the time the authorities “find” an illegal warehouse, it has already been gutted by fire, and the victims are already in the morgue. The silence from the leaders and a general festive mood with the bookfair that was ongoing at that time despite such a tragic incident reflected the undeniable distance between consumers and labourers. It is a microcosm of the modern Indian economy: a shiny exterior concealing a hollowed-out interior of regulatory bypass, labour exploitation, and cronyism. The workers who perished were the collateral damage of a system that views worker rights as a nuisance and fire safety as a luxury.

The startup revolution in India has too often been a revolution in finding new ways to circumvent the laws that were designed to protect the weak. As long as businesses are allowed to operate in wetlands without fire licenses, and as long as partners are denied the right to unionise, the Indian republic will continue to see its citizens incinerated in the name of growth. The idea that the Left damaged the work culture must be replaced by the recognition that an unregulated work culture is a death trap. The only way forward is a radical re-centring of labour dignity, environmental compliance, and the dismantling of the crony networks that allow companies the right to have the last word while their workers can say nothing at all.

[Suman Nath teaches anthropology at Government General Degree College, Keshiary, Paschim Medinipur, West Bengal. Courtesy: The Wire, an Indian nonprofit news and opinion website. It was founded in 2015 by Siddharth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia, and M. K. Venu.]