Labour Law's Existence

     Labour Law's Existence.

                                             The Labour Law protects the rights and lays down certain duties over the workers, where the law creates such a condition in order to maintain decorum of the work place with the specific protection and regulations for the employers as well as for the employees. Under such conditions there comes up certain acts like the Minimum Wages Act, 1948, Workmen's Compensation Act, 1923, Factories Act, 1948, Payment of Wages Act, 1936, Payment of Bonus Act, 1965, Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986 and many other more act in order for the proper working setup of the industry.

1-          Section 3 of the Minimum Wages Act lays rule for fixation of minimum rates of wages, which empowers the appropriate Government shall be empowered to fix the minimum wages in the manner prescribed by the act. Section 4 of the act lays basic rates of fixed wages. Whereas section 5 lays a proper procedure for the fixing and revising the minimum wages. Section 10 of the act lays extra payment for overtime works.

2-          Section 13 of the act fixes appropriate working hours per day    and such working shall be in consideration of humanitarian approach, as per the provisions of the act.

3-          Section 11 of the Factories act lays provision for cleanliness that every factory shall be clean and free from effluvia from drain, privy or other nuisance. Section 12 provides importance of disposing of waste and effluents. Section 13 of the act provides rules for conditions of ventilation and proper temperature for every worker. Section 14 and 15 provides that there shall be no dust, fumes and no kind of humidification in the working place for the workers respectively.

4-          Section 16 of the act prohibits overcrowding in the working place, where the sub-section 1 says that no room in any factory shall be overcrowded to an extent injurious to the health of the workers employed therein. Sub-section 2 lays down that there shall be in every work room of a factory in existence on the date of the commencement of this act at least 9.9 cubic meters and of a factory built after commencement of this act at least 14.2 cubic meters of space for every worker employed therein. The section further says that no account shall be taken of any space, which is more than 4.2 meters above the level of the floor of the room, for the purpose of this act.

5-          Section 17 and 18 of the act lays provisions for proper lighting and drinking facilities for the workers. Section 19 provides for proper latrine and urinal services by the factory. Whereas section 20 lays down that in every factory there shall be provided a sufficient number of spittoons in convenient places.

6-          Section 21 of the act lays provision for fencing of machinery by safeguards of substantial construction of protection of machinery. Section 23 says that no young person shall be allowed to work on dangerous machines as per two sub-section lays exception to this rule. Section 27 prohibits employment of women and children near cotton openers.

7-       Safety provisions as comes under sections 33, 34, 35, 36, 36-A, 37 etc., where the protection of the human body and its parts are needful. Whereas the company shall appoint even safety officers as per section 40-B.

Judicial Trend.

                                Government should make efforts to create a consensus for 'global             consumer policy.'

Judicial activism should be increased in consumer related issues also and the Supreme Court for consumer redressal agencies should play parental role.

Administrative advocacy should be encouraged in order to reduce the burden of consumer redressal agencies.

Indian consumer suffers from lack of political willingness to enforce consumer rights emphatically. V.R. Krishna Iyer, former Chief Justice of India, expresses himself more stridently:" The country's greatest enemy is GATT and the pro-MNC politics…leading to decolonization of India…Their capacity to corrupt, terrorize, propagandize, destabilize, colonies and subvert…has been the disaster of our country and of many others. And who invites them into our hallowed Bharat? The greats who have taken the oath of office under the secular socialist constitution and worship Gandhi as the Father of the Nation.

                                         Problem of pollution is the outcome of urbanization, overpopulation and industrialization. In modern times, therefore, it needs more effective legal opinions to counter the above. Accordingly Indian parliament passed The Environment Protection Act'1986 to safeguard the environmental degradation. The Indian Penal Code has few provisions on the subject, but they are ineffective when faced with the problems of an industrialized society. The first problem to attract the attention of certain state legislation in India was water pollution. But it was only in 1974 that a Central Act was enacted on the subject to be followed by The Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Cess Act'1977 and thereafter most drastic law had been enacted as Environment (Protection) Act'1986. India first got the taste of environmental disaster by two catastrophes that befell India - the Bhopal disaster in 1984 and Sri Ram Fertilizer Plant leak in 1985.

The Bhopal Gas Leak Disaster (Processing of claims) Act'1985 gave the Central Government the sole authority to represent (in litigation) the victims of Bhopal for compensation claims against the Union Carbide Company. Sri Ram gas Leak did not generate legislative activity but prompted Mr. M.C.Mehta (On behalf of Hindustani Andolon) and certain other organizations to start to use the effective legal tool in the form of Public Interest Litigation (PIL). This gave the Supreme Court an opportunity to enunciate certain important doctrine on tort law, corporate law (particularly the civil liability of directors for wrongs committed by the corporate body).

Recently, Supreme Court has broadly and liberally interpreted the Article 21 and transgressed into the area of protection of environment and held that the protection of environment and citizen's right to live in eco-friendly atmosphere interpreted as the basic right guaranteed under Article 21. Recently to mitigate the needs of environment related litigation, "Green Benches" had been constituted in many High Courts in the Country.