Labour Legislation I: Objectives, Principles, Classification and Evolution, the International Labour Organisation, Social Justice and Labour Legislation, the Indian Constitution and Labour Laws, and the Four Labour Codes

Labour legislation exists because the contract of employment is not a bargain between equals: the individual worker cannot negotiate hours, safety or pay with an employer on equal terms, and the law intervenes to set minimum standards, to protect those who cannot protect themselves, and to provide a framework in which collective bargaining and dispute settlement can work. Its objectives are the protection of workers against exploitation, the promotion of social justice, industrial peace and harmony, the welfare and social security of workers, and economic development through a healthy and productive workforce. The principles usually listed are protection, social justice, regulation, welfare, social security and economic development, with international uniformity as a sixth or seventh, the standards of the ILO making labour conditions comparable across countries so that no country gains a trade advantage by exploiting its workers.

The first labour laws of British India protected employers, not workers. The Workmen's Breach of Contract Act 1859 made a worker's breach of contract, after taking an advance, a criminal offence, and the plantation labour laws of Assam bound indentured workers by penal contracts; the 1859 Act was repealed only in 1925. Protective law began with the Factories Act 1881, prompted in part by Lancashire mill-owners who feared cheap Indian competition, which prohibited the employment of children under seven and limited the hours of children; the Act of 1891 extended protection to women, the Indian Mines Act 1901 regulated mines, and the Factories Act 1911 limited the working day of adult men in textile mills to twelve hours. After India joined the ILO as a founding member in 1919, legislation accelerated: the Factories (Amendment) Act 1922 set a sixty-hour week, the Workmen's Compensation Act 1923 introduced employers' liability for accidents, the Trade Unions Act 1926 and the Trade Disputes Act 1929 followed, and the Royal Commission on Labour (1929–31) produced the Payment of Wages Act 1936 and the Factories Act 1934. Independence brought the great consolidation of 1946–1952 — the Standing Orders, Industrial Disputes, Factories, Minimum Wages, ESI, Plantations, Mines and EPF Acts — and later the Acts on bonus, gratuity, contract labour, equal remuneration, bonded labour, migrant labour, child labour and construction workers.

The ILO was created in 1919 by Part XIII of the Treaty of Versailles, whose preamble declares that "universal and lasting peace can be established only if it is based upon social justice". It became the first specialised agency of the United Nations in 1946 and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1969. The Declaration of Philadelphia (1944), annexed to its Constitution, restated its aims: labour is not a commodity; freedom of expression and of association are essential to sustained progress; poverty anywhere constitutes a danger to prosperity everywhere. The ILO is uniquely tripartite. The International Labour Conference, meeting every June in Geneva, sends four delegates from each member state (two for the government and one each for employers and workers, each voting independently) and adopts conventions (binding on the states that ratify them) and recommendations (non-binding guidance). The Governing Body, also tripartite, is the executive council; ten of its government seats are held permanently by the states of chief industrial importance, and India is one of them. The International Labour Office in Geneva is the permanent secretariat, headed by the Director-General, Gilbert F. Houngbo since 2022. Supervision is by the Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations, the Conference Committee on the Application of Standards and the Committee on Freedom of Association (1951). The Decent Work Agenda (1999) has four pillars: employment, rights at work, social protection and social dialogue.

Social justice is the idea that the benefits and burdens of economic life should be fairly distributed, and that the law should correct inequalities of bargaining power; the Preamble promises justice, social, economic and political, and Article 38 directs the state to secure a social order in which justice informs all the institutions of national life. Indian courts read labour laws as beneficial legislation, to be interpreted in favour of the worker where the words allow. The Fundamental Rights relevant to labour are equality before the law and in public employment (Articles 14 to 16), the freedom to form associations and unions (Article 19(1)(c)), the right to life and livelihood (Article 21; Olga Tellis, 1985), the prohibition of traffic in human beings, begar and forced labour (Article 23) — under which the Supreme Court held in People's Union for Democratic Rights v. Union of India (1982), the Asiad workers' case, that paying less than the minimum wage is forced labour — and the prohibition of employing children below fourteen in factories, mines or other hazardous employment (Article 24).

The Directive Principles set the goals of labour policy: Article 39 — adequate means of livelihood for men and women (a), equal pay for equal work for both (d), protection of the health and strength of workers and of the tender age of children (e), and opportunities for children to develop in freedom and dignity (f); Article 39A, equal justice and free legal aid; Article 41, the right to work, to education and to public assistance in unemployment, old age, sickness and disablement; Article 42, just and humane conditions of work and maternity relief; Article 43, a living wage and conditions ensuring a decent standard of life; Article 43A, workers' participation in management (1976); and Article 43B, the promotion of cooperative societies (2011). In Randhir Singh v. Union of India (1982) the Supreme Court read "equal pay for equal work" into Articles 14 and 16 through Article 39(d). Labour is chiefly a Concurrent List subject: entry 22 covers trade unions and industrial and labour disputes, entry 23 social security and social insurance and employment and unemployment, and entry 24 the welfare of labour, including conditions of work, provident funds, employers' liability, workmen's compensation, invalidity and old-age pensions and maternity benefits. The Union List reserves the regulation of labour and safety in mines and oilfields (entry 55) and industrial disputes concerning Union employees (entry 61).

The Second National Commission on Labour (2002) recommended that the central labour laws be grouped into a small number of codes. Parliament enacted the Code on Wages in August 2019 and the Industrial Relations Code, the Code on Social Security and the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code in September 2020, together consolidating twenty-nine central laws. The four Codes were brought into force with effect from 21 November 2025, and the Acts they consolidate were repealed from that date, subject to the savings and transitional provisions in each Code. Rules under the Codes, central and state, have been framed and notified in stages, so a rule-level detail (a form, a fee, a register, a time limit, or how a matter begun under an old Act is to be completed) should be checked against the current notification. The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act 1986, amended and renamed in 2016, is not among the laws consolidated, and remains a separate Act.