Anand Teltumbde argues that India’s four labour codes shift workplace power toward employers by easing some prior oversight and constraining collective action. That is a critical interpretation, not a settled finding about the codes’ overall effects. The codes took effect nationally on November 21, 2025, according to the Ministry of Labour and Employment; what they mean in practice depends in part on state-level rules and enforcement.
What Teltumbde means by “dismantle”
In an opinion article published by Scroll on December 4, 2025, Teltumbde challenges the government’s description of the reforms as modernization. The Ministry describes the four codes as consolidating 29 existing labour laws. Teltumbde instead calls them a dismantling of “29 hard-won labour laws,” arguing that consolidation can conceal changes that make work more precarious and leave employers with greater discretion. The phrase is his political characterization, not the government’s neutral description.
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His subtitle says the codes “legalise the exploitation of workers, formalise their precarity and celebrate their subordination as liberation.” That is a forceful opinion, not an independently established conclusion about what the laws have caused. The useful way to assess it is to separate the legal changes he identifies from their eventual effects on jobs, income security, and bargaining power.
Which changes anchor his argument?
The comparisons below report Teltumbde’s account of the earlier framework and the new codes. They should not be read as an independent clause-by-clause legal opinion: the available material does not independently verify every statutory comparison.
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| Issue | Earlier framework, as Teltumbde describes it | Change or concern under the codes, as he describes it |
|---|---|---|
| Prior approval for layoffs, retrenchment, or closure | For covered factories, mines, and plantations with at least 100 workers, he says government permission was required. | He says the Industrial Relations Code raises the threshold to 300 workers. His concern is that establishments in the 100–299 range would no longer face the same prior-approval requirement. |
| Strike notice | Teltumbde contrasts the earlier rules with a broader notice regime under the new code; the source does not establish a complete old-rule comparison. | He says notice requirements extend to workers in any establishment, with notice within the prescribed 60-day window and a 14-day waiting period. He also points to restrictions during specified conciliation, tribunal, arbitration, settlement, or award periods, which he sees as barriers to spontaneous collective action. This is not the same as saying the right to strike has been eliminated. |
| Standing orders | He says formal standing orders were required at establishments with 100 or more workers. | He says the threshold rises to 300, meaning fewer establishments would be covered by that requirement for formal written workplace rules. |
| Union recognition | The source does not provide a comparable earlier threshold. | Teltumbde describes a system in which a union with at least 51% membership becomes the sole negotiating union. He argues that reaching this threshold could make unified bargaining difficult. |
| Fixed-term employment | The source does not give a corresponding earlier rule. | He worries that broader use of fixed-term hiring could substitute for regular jobs and leave workers exposed to non-renewal. Separately, the Ministry’s March 2026 FAQ says a fixed-term employee is eligible for gratuity after one year of service under contract. Benefit eligibility does not itself resolve the concern about continued employment. |
Why legal flexibility may matter to a worker’s income
Teltumbde’s central concern is about the balance of power, not just the number of laws combined. If the approval threshold for certain employment actions is higher, fewer covered establishments may have to obtain prior government permission under the rule he describes. If formal standing orders cover fewer workplaces, fewer workers may have that particular framework of written workplace rules. And if strike notice and timing restrictions apply more broadly, workers may find some forms of collective action harder to organize. These are plausible channels through which a rule could affect job security or negotiating leverage; they do not, by themselves, prove how often employers will use the flexibility or what the aggregate employment effect will be.
The Scroll article also criticizes the codes’ wage definition, scheduling flexibility, contract-labour rules, gig-worker protections, safety provisions, enforcement, and size-based exemptions. Those are significant topics, but the available source material does not establish enough clause-level detail to state their precise legal operation or quantify their effects here. A worker’s actual protections may depend on the applicable code provision, rules in the relevant state, employment category, and enforcement in the workplace.
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What is established about commencement and implementation?
The Ministry of Labour and Employment’s year-end review, posted December 30, 2025, says all four codes took effect on November 21, 2025. Its March 2026 FAQ continues to address code-specific implementation questions, including gratuity and leave. Labour is a shared central and state responsibility, so national commencement does not mean every practical detail will operate identically in every state.
A May 22, 2026 analysis by NCAER researchers Farzana Afridi and Jayanta Talukder examines the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code (OSHWC). It describes consolidated safety and employment-documentation rules, threshold changes, and administrative reforms, while stressing that likely employment and safety outcomes depend on firm size, sector, and enforcement. The analysis also notes that permissions for women to work at night are not paired in the Code, as it analyzes it, with a corresponding safe-transport obligation. NCAER’s page gives a commencement date that conflicts with the Ministry’s year-end review; the Ministry date is the one used here for when the codes took effect.
What remains unsettled about the effects?
A change in legal requirements and a change in workers’ lived outcomes are different questions. The provisions Teltumbde highlights identify possible shifts in oversight and bargaining conditions. Whether those shifts lead to more hiring, less secure work, weaker safety, or a different balance of bargaining power requires evidence about implementation and outcomes—not just a reading of the stated rules.
The Social Policy Research Foundation’s February 3, 2026 discussion describes the debate as polarized and calls for empirical evaluation rather than a verdict based only on political alignment. NCAER likewise emphasizes that OSHWC outcomes are contingent on firm size, sector, and enforcement. These analyses do not establish a single measured verdict on the aggregate effects of all four codes.
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For a worker evaluating what the changes mean personally, the relevant questions are practical: which code applies to the issue, what state rules govern it, whether the worker is fixed-term, contract, gig, or regular staff, and whether the employer and enforcement authorities follow the rules. Teltumbde’s essay is best read as a warning about the direction of legal power; the available evidence does not yet settle the codes’ overall economic or workplace impact.
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