R Geetha & Priti Narayan




In its recently released budget, the Tamil Nadu govt allocated `2,022 crore to the labour welfare and skill development department. Even as it has expressed intentions to conduct multiple skills training programmes, the govt seems committed to continuing welfare schemes for workers. What is of concern, however, is that existing mechanisms for disbursing welfare and social security to workers are under threat, now that the Social Security (SS) Code has been passed by the Centre.




The Tamil Nadu Manual Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Work) Act was passed in 1982, which created state protections for informal workers , and provided for the establishment of welfare boards to provide social security and welfare. Today, the state has 20 welfare boards for workers across different sectors functioning under the labour department, and 19 others administered by other departments, including for workers in the agriculture and fisheries sector. These boards provide for old age pensions, educational assistance for children, maternity benefits, and monetary assistance in the event of death, accident or disability, and other, occupation or sector-specific benefits.




Many sector-specific welfare boards have mechanisms through which they receive fund inflows, with which these benefits can be enabled. For instance, the construction workers welfare board charges 1% cess on estimated costs of construction from builders and developers to put towards worker welfare. While not all welfare boards are funded through these mechanisms, informal worker unions have been demanding that such pathways must be created for workers in other sectors too, including domestic workers who can benefit from a proportion of property tax collected, for instance. Unions have also been demanding that benefits, particularly pensions, provided to informal workers across the board be improved in the state.




The SS Code threatens even existing mechanisms. In the new Code, organised workers are to be given some social security benefits, while informal workers are to receive vaguely defined “welfare schemes”. The SS Code sets up one welfare board for all informal workers, except for construction and gig work. There are no funding obligations stipulated for employers or the Centre. Even for construction workers, the Code stipulates the collection of levies only from constructions costing more than Rs 50 lakh, reducing the total amount of money collected for worker welfare, and leaving out the hundreds of thousands of construction workers working in smaller construction projects.




Most significantly, the SS Code threatens the continued functioning of all existing 39 sector-specific boards established in Tamil Nadu. This is not just a threat to the funding mechanisms ensured for informal workers across different sectors through multiple state-level legislations, it is also a threat to a mechanism to effectively distribute social security and welfare schemes. Well-intentioned budgetary allocations will not be effectively utilized without welfare board architecture.




Social security for the lakhs of informal workers across the country cannot be distributed through a single welfare board operating at the level of the Union govt. Tamil Nadu must take an urgent, proactive stance to protecting state legislations for informal worker welfare and the welfare boards under them. These legislations must be strengthened to expand funding for informal workers across multiple sectors and include grievance redressal mechanisms that look into workplace issues, which, again, can only be effective when attempted at the decentralized, local scale.




The central SS Code expresses intention to make ESI available to all workers. It can do so only if it is amended to enable implementation through sectoral welfare boards, which can collect worker and employer contributions to fund ESI coverage. Tamil Nadu presents an ideal case through which effective implementation can be undertaken.



(R Geetha is advisor to the Unorganized Workers Federation, and Priti Narayan is Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia)