India’s Top PSUs 2019

40 Employee Welfare Initiatives Employee Welfare India’s labour laws are undergoing significant changes in recent times. With a view to reform labour laws, the Govt. of India is in the process of codifying labour laws into four codes – Wages, Industrial Relations, Social Security, and Occupational Safety and Health and Working Conditions. Recently, the first code on wages was passed – the Code on Wages, 2019 covers all workers in the organized as well as the unorganized sectors including full-time, part-time and contractual workers across all skill levels. The Occupation Safety, Health and Working Conditions Bill (OSHC) has also been introduced in the Lok Sabha. Earlier, in 2017, the Maternity Benefit Act was amended to increase the duration of maternity leave from 12 weeks to 26 weeks for two surviving children. Other benefits extended under the amended law included maternity leave of 12 weeks to commissioning and adopting mothers, provision to work from home for newmothers and mandatory provision of on-site day care services. The Code on Wages, 2019 seeks to consolidate and amend laws pertaining to wages, bonus and equal remuneration. The Code stipulates a tripartite committee comprising representatives of trade unions, employers and state government to fix a floor wage for workers throughout the country. The Code also addresses the issue of delays in payment of wages and discrimination between male, female and transgender workers. The OSHC seeks to consolidate existing 13 laws pertaining to factories, mines, dock workers, building and other construction workers, plantation labour, contract labour, inter-statemigrant workmen, motor transport workers, sales promotion employees, beedi and cigar workers, working journalists and other newspaper employees, cine workers and cinema theatre workers. The Bill also recommends a ‘common license’ for factory, contract labour, beedi and cigar establishments, and a single pan-India license for five years for contract labour. In the public sector domain, companies are sensitive about providing optimum working conditions to their employees and ensuring the overall welfare of their employees and their families. In many cases, employees reside in townships within the vicinity of company sites, and PSUs provide basic amenities within the township to ensure a comfortable life. These townships are built with necessary infrastructure such as schools, shopping malls, hospitals, clinics, dispensaries, playgrounds, community centres, recreation facilities, banks, ATMs, places of worships, etc, and are equipped with round-the-clock water and electricity supply. Besides, several PSUs routinely conduct various employee engagement programs to keep their workforce motivated. These programs include festival bashes, family get-togethers, motivational programs, sports and cultural activities, health and medical camps, adventure events, competitions and other recreational activities and training programs. Many companies have provisions for crèche and day child-care centres to cater to the needs of