The incidents of labour strife involving contract labour, its welfare issues, wages, working hours and raw handling in recent past have again brought the contract labour issue in focus.
The data of Annual survey of Industry (ASI) which covers establishment registered under the Factories Act, shows a surge in deployment in contract labours usage in the organized manufacturing sector. As per this report the over half of the increase in total employment from 7.7 million to 13.7 million between 2000-01 and 2015-16 was accounted for by contract workers. The share of contract workers in total employment increased sharply from 15.5 per cent in 2000-01 to 27.9 per cent in 2015-16, while the share of directly hired workers fell from 61.2 per cent to 50.4 per cent over the same period. More interestingly the surge in the Contract Labour workforce has been found more in capital intensive industry rather than labour intensive industry. The reason for such surge can be attributed to four-fold reasons. One the rigid labour laws,...
