Contract Labour

Every Mumbai housing society has a security guard in a uniform, but ask who pays his salary and the answer is usually not the society. It is an agency, which bills the society a monthly amount and pays the guard whatever it decides. If the agency pockets the money, who answers to the guard? The OSH Code's Part on contract labour exists to answer that question: it decides who must hold a licence, who pays wages when the contractor does not, and which jobs may not be given to contractors at all.

In two minutes

Under Part I of Chapter XI (ss.45 to 58) a contractor supplying or using fifty or more contract workers must hold a licence, the contractor pays wages but the principal employer is the backstop, and contract labour is barred in core activities except in three listed situations.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Labour Law and Industrial Relations – II on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.