The invisible workforce

Context: Labour laws must change to benefit the lowest common denominator.

Differentiation among migrant labour class: One that is educated and employed in organised sector, the other section, informally employed with no education, that has to bear the brunt. 

Critical Vulnerability factors: 

• Wages and Savings: They are paid daily or weekly and save in real assets back home (land and house).

• Unorganized sector: with no one employer and depend entirely on labour contractors and community networks to find their next jobs and have no record of their existence where they work..

• Safety nets: They operate outside the official/institutional social safety nets in their place of work.

• Invisible to states: the state where they work does not recognize them as ‘citizens’ of that state because they vote in their home states.

Addressing the factors:

• Lacuna in law: Although all units have to be registered with the government, there is no requirement to register workers working in these units. Provisions should be included regarding registration of contract workers.

• Structural reforms: Reforms like ‘pro rata’ payments of gratuity/provident fund/insurance (as followed in the US) to the workers must be pushed forward rather than blindly scrapping the limits on working hours etc.

• Mindset of state governments: States should recognise the importance of these invisible migrant labourers as they create economic surplus for the state they work in.