E-labor needs some hard work to move forward

Ministry of Labor and Employment (MOLE) on August 26, 2021 e-shram launchedweb portal to create A National Database of Unorganized Workers (NDUW), which will be linked with Aadhaar. It seeks to register an estimated 398-400 million unorganized workers and issue e-shram cards. However, it came into existence more than a decade after the Unorganized Workers’ Social Security Act was passed in 2008; And if we consider inter-state migrant workers, the portal is a little over four decades late. This also comes after repeated nudges by the Supreme Court of India. If the central and state governments had started these legally mandated procedures in time, the woes of lakhs of vulnerable workers could have been avoided. This is the result of apathy of the state. Any government – ​​neither the United Progressive Alliance or the National Democratic Alliance – can lay claim to this legally mandated measure. Indeed, the political class seeks an ‘apology’ from the informal workers.

a long process

Considering the vast nature of registering each worker, it would be a lengthy process. Naturally, the speed of registration will be slow in the initial stages; As of writing this article, 0.61 million workers have been registered. Looking at an estimated 380 million workers as a universe of registrations – debated as the novel coronavirus pandemic has pushed millions of workers into informality and the estimate also depends on the assumptions used to estimate – registrations completed in 60 To do this, 6.33 million workers have to be registered. days, and 4.2 million employees for 90 days. The government has not mentioned the gestation period to assess its strategy and efficiency.

Read also | Registration of 21.02 lakh unorganized workers till 7th September

In the medium to long term, workers benefit from registration. But immediate benefit of accident insurance up to ₹0.2 million registered employee Certainly not an attractive carrot. The main point of attraction is the benefits they stand to accrue during normal and crisis-ridden times such as the novel coronavirus pandemic now which the government needs to channelize properly.

Data security, other issues

There is also another issue: why should small employers be encouraged to ask or require their employees to register, even though the government allegedly They need to compulsorily register their workers. While the government can appeal to them, any punitive measures will hurt the ease of doing business. The apparent productivity gains arising from social security assurances to these workers is a contentious issue. One of the important concerns of e-portal is data security, including its potential misuse, especially when it is a sizable database. The central government will have to share data with the state governments that have different data protection capabilities. There are also media reports pointing to the lack of a national infrastructure relating to data protection.

There are several issues related to the eligibility of individuals for registration as well as certain issues. With the exclusion of employees from the purview of EPF and ESI, lakhs of contract and fixed term contract workers will be excluded from the purview of UW. Down Social Security Code (SSC)Hazardous establishments employing a single worker will have to be covered under ESI, which means these workers will also be excluded. NDUW excludes millions of workers over the age of 59 from its purview, which constitutes age discrimination. For them to be frugal or with no social security, their exclusion would harm their welfare.

As such, SSC is excluded as ESC and EPF benefits will be applicable to those employed in establishments employing 10 or 20 workers respectively. Limitations in labor laws fragment the labor market. Many workers will neither have an Aadhaar linked mobile nor a smartphone. Aadhaar-seeding is a contentious issue with political color, especially in the North-Eastern regions. But it is necessary and the government is right to insist on it. The range of fixed and systemic exclusions is very large and there may be other categories of exclusions due to potential procedural deficiencies.

complex identity

The identity of the unorganized workers presents problems due to its complexity and ever-changing identity. Many circular migrants are workers and they move quickly, even unexpectedly, from one business to another. Many others work formal and informal as some may be related to the gig economy during non-office hours, for example as an Uber taxi or a Swiggy employee. They are spread over the formal and informal sectors.

The specifics of identification of unorganized workers are so complex that one has to wonder whether mechanical and perception-based portal registration will be able to capture the complexities and dynamics associated with them. Even though MOLE does include gig workers in the process, it is not legally clear whether a gig/platform worker can be classified as a worker first (the other three labor codes do not include these workers). ), and the other can be classified as organized or unorganized workers. – Definition of “unorganized worker” in the Social Security Code (beware. S.2(86)) does not specifically include them, unless they are declared ‘self-employed’ or ‘wage workers’. In fact, the NCO family is not specifically included in the code. ‘Gig/Platform Worker’ Even if they are registered under multiple categories of ‘drivers’ that would hide their unique identity. Of course, there is an all-inclusive miscellaneous category that has to be used wisely to expand business categories.

other constraints

The central government will have to depend on the state governments for this project to be successful. Major problems arise at the regional level for two primary reasons. It is reported that in some states like Maharashtra, the server was down for a few days. The incentive for many efforts on the part of registering workers would be weak. Supporting stakeholders should appropriately intervene in these matters.

Read also | Formalizing social security for the informal sector

In many states, social interaction, especially with stakeholders, is weak or non-existent. The success of the project depends on the participation of various stakeholders other than trade unions, large scale and innovative dissemination exercise involving multiple media outlets in different languages, organizing camps on demand of the stakeholders and the government itself. With regard to resolution of grievance redressal mechanism, micro-level operations etc. There is also the concern of corruption as mid-service agencies such as internet providers may charge exorbitant fees to register and print e-shram cards. Therefore, the involvement of monitoring agencies is important. More importantly, to assess the efficiency of the registration system, the government should publish statistics on the national and regional level of registration.

E-shram is an important system to provide much needed visibility to hitherto invisible workers. It will provide them with labor market citizenship documents. I will go a step further to argue for triple linkage for efficient and leak-free distribution of all benefits and voices to workers/citizens, i.e. One-Nation-One-Ration Card (ONOR), E-Shram Card (especially bank account seeded) and Election Commission Card. Last but not the least, registration cannot be a source of exclusion of a person from receiving social assistance and benefits.

KR Shyam Sundar is Professor, HRM Area XLRI, Xavier School of Management, Jamshedpur. The author V.P. Deshpande, former Labor Department official, Government of Maharashtra and Sonia George, Secretary, Services, Kerala.