'Is This A Slavery System In India?'

'Workers are the people who create all the wealth in this country. How can you call them anti-national?'

The industrial belt of Noida (earlier North Okhla Industrial Devleopment Authority) -- a satellite city of Delhi and one of Uttar Pradesh's most densely packed manufacturing hubs -- has not seen a labour upheaval of this scale in living memory.

On the morning of April 13, 2026, thousands of workers walked off factory floors and onto the streets across Noida's Sectors 62, 63 and Phase 2, setting off what has become the most significant worker unrest in the National Capital Region in years.

The reason, many say, was deceptively small: A sharp rise in cooking gas cylinder prices, driven partly by supply disruptions following the escalating conflict involving Iran-US-Israel. But the fire had been building for a decade.

Noida's minimum wage had not been revised since 2014.

Workers -- the overwhelming majority of them migrant labourers hired on rolling contracts -- were pulling 12 to 13-hour shifts for as little as Rs 11,000 to Rs 12,000 a month, with no overtime, no job security, and no meaningful recourse.

When the protests spread to over 80 locations and drew upwards of, by some accounts, 50,000 workers, the Uttar Pradesh government's response was swift -- but not in the way workers had hoped.

Police descended on factory clusters, hundreds were arrested, trade union leaders were placed under house arrest, and the state labelled the agitation a conspiracy by 'anti-national elements'.

The UP government did announce a 21 per cent interim wage hike, raising the unskilled worker rate to Rs 13,690 -- still well below the Rs 26,000 that unions have been demanding.

By April 16, over 466 people had been remanded to judicial custody across Noida and Gurugram.

Elamaram Kareem, national general secretary of the CPI (M)-affiliated Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), a three-time MLA from Kerala, former Kerala minister, and Rajya Sabha MP, has been at the forefront of the nationwide protest response.

"The new Labour Codes are the death knell of the working class of this country. They were designed to safeguard the interests of the employer class, not the working class," Mr Kareem tells Prasanna D Zore/Rediff.

What were the core issues that drove workers in Noida onto the streets?

See, Noida is a major industrial area in Uttar Pradesh. Workers engaged across different factories there are kept as contract workers -- even those doing regular, permanent work. The only reason for this is to pay them meagre wages.

If they were classified as permanent workers, the employer would have certain legal obligations towards them. So the employers just keep calling them contract workers.

Now, contract work legally means casual or temporary work -- building construction, that kind of thing. But here, in the direct manufacturing process, they are engaging workers on contract. That is illegal.

The labour department of the state (Uttar Pradesh) government is supposed to examine this. But UP's labour department functions for the management, not for the workers. It is supposed to safeguard the interests of both workers and employers. Instead, it is denying everything to the workers and protecting the capitalists. That is the ground reality there.

On minimum wages -- the Minimum Wages Act (the Minimum Wages Act, 1948, a pivotal Indian legislation that empowers central and state governments to fix and revise minimum wages for designated skilled and unskilled employments) had a proper process for fixing wages.

Now that has been nullified by the new Labour Codes (2025).

The last minimum wage for Noida's industrial workers was announced ten years ago. It was never renewed. Workers were not satisfied with it even then, but they accepted it. Since then, nothing. That itself tells you the attitude of this government.

The immediate trigger was the sharp rise in cooking gas cylinder prices. The majority of these workers are migrant labourers, getting Rs 12,000-Rs 13,000 a month and working 12 to 13 hours a day.

After eight hours, they are not getting any overtime.

They are cooking in their homes, managing on very little, and suddenly the gas cylinder -- which they are buying from the black market, by the way -- has shot up to Rs 600, Rs 700, even more.

That is a serious blow to households of poor workers.

That was what ignited things.

'Calling a legitimate workers' movement a conspiracy is a way of deflecting attention from the genuine economic distress that workers are suffering'

Was the UP government's response adequate?

What should the government have done? It should have called a meeting with trade unions, sat down and discussed. They did not do that. Instead, they accused workers of being extremists, of having unholy links with anti-national organisations, of acting against industrial development.

All the blame was put on the workers. Then they announced a small hike in the base minimum wage, and said they would form a committee to revise wages.

But see -- when a government announces something like this, it should have been done in consultation with trade unions. That did not happen.

A minimum wage committee, by law, has to be a tri-party committee -- employer representatives, workers' union representatives, and the government. Why did the UP government bypass this?

Central trade unions are recognised by the Government of India. The Centre consults them on all manner of things. Then why can't the UP government consult trade unions on the wages of Noida workers?

Who do you blame for what happened in Noida?

The anti-labour policy of the UP government -- that is the issue. All the existing labour laws and the rights of workers are being violated.

CITU has taken this very seriously. We issued a strong statement demanding the protection of workers' interests. On April 16, we conducted a countrywide protest against the government's conduct -- the illegal arrests, the harassment and the detentions.

Thousands of workers across the country came onto the streets. We will continue to build a strong, united movement against this BJP-UP government's attitude.

How many unions participated in the April 16 protest?

Only CITU took this issue up directly. Others have not come forward yet, though some have reacted through press statements. AUTUC issued a statement opposing the UP government's attitude. We are in contact with all the major trade unions.

The UP government called the protests a conspiracy. How do you respond?

That is a completely false allegation. We are a recognised trade union in this country. Trade unions are organisations of workers -- and workers are the people who create all the wealth in this country. How can you call them anti-national? This is false blame, nothing else.

Calling a legitimate workers' movement a conspiracy is a way of deflecting attention from the genuine economic distress that workers are suffering.

'Everything that workers had built over decades has been destroyed by these codes'

These migrant workers live hand to mouth. What immediate measures can actually ensure basic dignity and financial stability for them?

First, the government must immediately constitute a proper tri-party minimum wage committee -- with representatives of workers' unions, employers, and government. That is the legal requirement. The government cannot unilaterally decide what the minimum wage should be. That is not acceptable.

Second, the issue of cooking gas prices must be addressed directly. This price rise, linked to the global supply disruption following the Iran conflict, has fallen hardest on the poorest workers.

The government must ensure that cooking gas reaches these workers at a reasonable price. Otherwise, these poor workers simply cannot sustain themselves.

These are not unreasonable demands. These are questions of basic survival.

With most workers earning Rs 12,000-Rs 13,000 a month, is India's growth model essentially built on suppressed wages?

Yes. That is the average wage -- Rs 12,000-Rs 13,000 a month, after working 13 hours a day. What is this? Is this a slavery system in India?

In 1885, the Chicago workers were fighting for an eight-hour workday. We, in India today, are still behind that point. Is that not shameful?

Should India then have a national minimum wage floor to address state-level disparities?

We strongly oppose the national floor wage proposal of the Government of India. The amount they specified in the law presented in Parliament -- Rs 200-something per day -- is completely meagre. We cannot agree to that.

The Minimum Wages Act passed right after Independence had proper provisions to protect working people. That has been undermined by the new Labour Code.

The national floor wage concept does not account for the varying costs of living across regions.

Life expenses in a town are higher than in rural areas.

A mobile phone manufacturing unit generates far more wealth than a traditional cottage industry.

Minimum wages need to be fixed after considering all these factors -- sector by sector, area by area.

A single national floor number simply cannot capture that reality.

Despite the New Labour Codes promising protection, workers seem to be in worse condition. What has gone wrong?

The new Labour Codes are the death knell of the working class of this country. Twenty-nine labour laws have been nullified and consolidated into four codes.

Workers now have no real right to form a trade union -- it cannot even get registered under the new law. There is no proper provision for strike action. Everything that workers had built over decades has been destroyed by these codes.

They were designed to safeguard the interests of the employer class, not the working class. There is no other way to read them.

'The economic model itself -- the neoliberal framework -- is the root problem'

Factories in Noida are largely MSMEs. They claim they cannot afford higher wages. So who bears the cost -- the worker through poverty, or the state through intervention?

The wage structure for MSMEs and large industries can be different -- that is understood. For big manufacturing industries, wages are typically fixed through bilateral discussion between trade unions and management. The labour department (belonging to states) can step in if either party requests it. That process works differently from minimum wage fixation.

For minimum wage fixation, the government appoints a tri-party committee, conducts surveys and studies, and then fixes the minimum wage for that sector -- taking into account the wealth being generated by those units, whether small or medium industries, all relevant factors.

Our demand for proper minimum wages is not against industrial growth or the survival of these enterprises. We, the trade unions, also consider what revenue workers are generating for these units, what competition those units face in the market, how their products are placed.

We take a practical stand.

If our demands lead to the closure of a unit, it is also a disaster for the workers. We are very much interested in the existence and survival of industrial units. Our interests are not opposed to theirs.

Is India heading towards a permanently working poor -- people who have jobs but still cannot survive on what they earn?

In the present condition of India, the life standard of the poor working class is behind even the British era. There are approximately 58 crore (580 million) workers in this country.

If you account for agricultural workers, permanent factory workers, government servants, military, police -- everyone drawing a formal salary -- that number is below 5 crores (50 million).

All the rest -- the majority -- are in the unorganised sector: Self-employed, gig workers, daily wage workers.

Most labour laws are simply not applicable to them. That is the condition of Indian workers. And yet the government claims India is developing.

Where is this development? The wealth is going to a handful of corporates. The real daily income of the working class is not increasing.

Has India's economic model fundamentally failed its workforce?

The Modi government has specifically failed to safeguard the interests of the workforce. But I would say the economic model itself -- the neoliberal framework -- is the root problem. The Congress also adopted these policies.

But in the post-Independence years, during the Nehru era, there was at least a different kind of thinking. The idea was that development must include the downtrodden -- agricultural workers, poor farmers, unorganised workers. Their interests had to be protected alongside industrial growth. That was the founding philosophy.

The first labour commission of independent India -- the (Justice) P B Gajendragadkar Commission -- stated clearly in its report that protecting workers is a fundamental right, enshrined in the Constitution.

On the basis of that commission's report, the Indian Labour Conference, a tri-party forum, was formed. It met every year, with the prime minister inaugurating the session.

After 2014, that forum has not met even once. Not a single meeting. That tells you everything about where this government's priorities lie.