For two reasons, India has a larger labour legislation. One reason is that the trade union movement is spread under different ideological frames and the other, the background of British colonial legacy, which tried to accommodate the labour revolts within the limits of syndicalism. However, only some of these labour enactments including those on social security, welfare schemes and welfare funds protect the unorganised/informal sector labour and that also to a limited extent. As far as the home-based workers are concerned, labour legislations work least in their favour.

Inapplicability of Existing Labour Enactments

The new industrial situation has only escalated the influx of the retrenched workers into the unorganised sector. This is rather expected. Piece-rate payment, home-based work and contractual work are increasing trends in the unorganised sector. Primarily, it should be said that the existing labour laws such as the Factories Act 1948, Industrial Disputes Act 1947, Employees’ State Insurance Act 1948, Employees’ Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 1952, Payment of Gratuity Act 1972 and Maternity Benefit Act 1961 are not usually applied for unorganised sector workers.

Even the Workmen’s Compensation (Amendment) Act 2000 turned out to be of no use for those it was intended. Most of the workers in unorganised sector who become victims of accident find it very difficult to prove who is their employer, a condition to avail workmen’s compensation. The Inter-State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act 1979 was enacted to regulate the employment and conditions of service of inter-state migrant workers. The Act offers several benefits to the inter-state migrant workers. But the worker, on record, is recruited from the state where they work, and thus the provisions are completely subverted.

The Minimum Wages Act 1948, enacted for fixing, reviewing and revising the minimum rates of wages in the scheduled employments in the unorganised sector, remains ineffective, as around 60 per cent of the workforce within it are self-employed or home-based and are so outside the purview of the Act. Payment of Wages Act 1936 regulates the payment of wages to certain classes of persons employed. However, this Act is also not applicable for self-employed and home-based workers, as they are not persons employed in the establishments given in the Act.

As almost all the labour laws cover the workers who are employed by employers, the vast majority of the unorganised labour working as home-based and self-employed workers and a large section employed in smaller establishments are left out of the purview of the already existing plethora of labour legislations. The conditions such as the need of a minimum of 90 days of work in the case of Building and Other Construction Workers’ (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act 1996 preclude most the construction workers from the purview of the Act. In fact, more than 80 per cent of the construction workers are not covered owing to such conditions.

Home-based Workers

Home-based workers are distinct because of their workplace; they work at home or near the home in premises that are not those of an employer, for a cash income. Different from unpaid household work, they are not domestic workers either, because the domestic workers work at their employers’ homes. Business people and well-paid professionals working from home, and skilled tele-workers should be differentiated from the home-based workers, who earn only a subsistence-level income. The home-based are actually employed, though the employer-employee relation is hidden. Precisely, they are those who work for an employer, intermediary or subcontractor, for a piece-rate, who are not responsible (or without patent) for designing or marketing the product, but simply contribute their labour. Home-based work ranges from pappad and snacks, bindi and bangles to electrical and electronic manufacturing. You find them in beedi industry, carpet, knitwear and weaving sectors. Though not exclusive, they are mostly women workers.

Home-based work is common in handicraft production. But it is also found in modern industries such as garments, footwear, electrical assembly and plastic products, and non-traditional handwork like making soft toys, sewing various decorative items and silk-painting. You find the home-based workers, also called ‘industrial outworker’ and ‘homeworker’, in almost all manufacturing and assembling sectors including among handicraft workers. The ILO Convention on Home Work, adopted in 1996, mandates the need for the development of national policies on homework that “promote equality of treatment between homeworkers and other wage earners” in such areas as the right to organize, protection against discrimination, remuneration, occupational safety and health, social security protection, and training. The ILO Convention came into being after a coordinated campaign by home-based workers’ networks. However, the convention has been ratified only by a limited number of countries. The adoption of this Convention is significant, because it means that ratifying countries will be obligated to convert its provisions into national laws.

Homeworkers in India

In India, the seriousness of the problem of homework came to notice, because of the work by SEWA (Self-Employed Women’s Association) and other movements. In the National Consultation on Home-based Workers held under the auspices of the Ministry of Labour in January 2000, the paper by Ministry of Labour puts the informal count of homeworkers at around 50 million. The paper bases its tentative count on the survey done by SEWA on the status of home-based workers in readymade garments, pappad making and agarbatti making in Gujarat, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. Studies by SEWA point out that the female workers constitute the majority of home-based workers.

The technical session of the National Consultation on the Status of Living and Working Conditions broadly agreed with the definition of homeworkers as suggested in the ILO Convention No. 177. The suggestion that the definition of homeworkers should not include self-employed persons and should be limited to wage earners working for some outside employer for remuneration is welcome. But, its assessment that “the home workers would mean workers working at home/place of their will rather than place of employer’s choice/home environment,” is flawed, because their will is actually subdued by the need for work and dependence for payment of remuneration. The recommendation was that the homeworkers should be included under the Minimum Wages Act so as to get a minimum level of wage protection, the welfare schemes and provisions existing under different labour laws be extended to them, and that the existing provisions in the organised sector should not be transplanted to the home workers. The report of the National Commission on Labour 2002 recognizes the home-based workers as a significant section of workers in India.