No War But the Class War Initiative in South Asia

India’s New Labour Codes: The Predictable Theatre of Trade Union Opposition

The Labour Codes as Capitalist Restructuring

On November 22, 2024, the Indian government implemented four labour codes consolidating 29 existing laws, fundamentally transforming the country’s labour framework.[1] The codes permit companies to hire and fire workers more easily, allow longer factory shifts including night work for women, and raise the threshold for firms requiring prior approval for k from 100 to 300 workers.[2] This restructuring serves capital’s requirements in a period of intensifying global competition and declining profitability. The codes define gig and platform work for the first time, bringing over 10 million workers under national social protection frameworks while simultaneously enabling greater labour flexibility.[3]

The impact was felt across several chemical-intensive sectors, including Paints, Oils, Gas, and Pharmaceuticals. Additionally, it significantly affected over 400 million informal sector workers in India.

The codes represent not an aberration but the logical evolution of capitalism in its decadent phase. What the bourgeois state presents as modernization simplifying colonial-era laws, providing social security benefits, guaranteeing minimum wages functions primarily to facilitate capital accumulation under deteriorating economic conditions. The Industrial Relations Code mandates stricter procedures for dispute resolution, introduces higher thresholds for unionization and strike actions, and requires establishments with over 300 workers to obtain government approval for retrenchment.[4] The sixty-day notice requirement for strikes and the ban on flash strikes effectively criminalize spontaneous working-class resistance.[4]

The threshold increase from 100 to 300 workers for mandatory standing orders provides capital with expanded freedom to restructure labour relations without legal constraints.[5] The clarification on fixed-term contracts ensures such employees receive similar benefits as permanent staff,[5] yet this merely institutionalizes precarity as the norm rather than the exception. The supposed protection masks the transformation of all employment into contingent, disposable labour power.

The Predictability of Trade Union Opposition

Ten major trade unions condemned the rollout as a “deceptive fraud” and demanded immediate withdrawal of the laws, scheduling nationwide protests.[6] The Centre of Indian Trade Unions organized protest marches in Bhubaneswar where hundreds of workers gathered and burned copies of the new labour codes.[7] This theatrical display of opposition follows a recognizable pattern. The unions organized nationwide protests over the past five years since the codes were first approved by parliament, yet the implementation proceeded regardless.

The predictability extends to the timing and scope of resistance. The government held over a dozen consultations with unions since June 2024, creating the appearance of tripartite dialogue while the fundamental direction remained unchanged.[2] Union leaders claim they were sidelined and that key objections were ignored, yet they continued participating in this charade of consultation. The unions scheduled their response for November 26 a symbolic one-day protest that allows capital to prepare, adjust production schedules, and absorb the disruption without fundamental challenge.

The content of union demands reveals their essential function as negotiators of labour power rather than organs of working-class struggle. Amarjeet Kaur of the All India Trade Union Congress stated the government intends to suppress workers in the name of ease of doing business through labor reforms.[1] This formulation accepts the framework of national economic development, merely objecting to the terms. The unions regard the codes as “anti-worker” as they purport to erode workers’ rights, weaken trade unions and favour employers in the name of “ease of doing business”, yet this critique remains within capitalist logic, defending past accumulations of rights rather than attacking wage labour itself.

The CPI(M) alleged the codes attempt “to snatch away the right to strike and criminalise any collective action by the working class.”[2] This expresses genuine concern about restrictions on union activity, but the unions treat the strike as a sanctioned procedure requiring legal protection rather than as autonomous working-class action that must defy legal constraints. The unions seek restoration of their institutional role as mediators, not the abolition of mediation itself. The CPI(M) dismissed the government’s claim that the reforms would attract investment, stating the codes are “designed to leave labour unprotected in the face of the onslaught of capital.”[2]

The Samsung Strike: Union Sabotage in Action

The recent Samsung India strike demonstrates the concrete function of trade unions in containing and terminating working-class struggle. In March 2025, the Centre of Indian Trade Unions abruptly shut down a militant month-long strike by 500 permanent workers without allowing them any vote on the decision and without the company immediately reinstating 23 suspended workers.[8] The suspensions were the key issue precipitating the strike, yet CITU ordered its cessation while this central demand remained unmet.

The CITU short-circuited the strike as support for it was growing among workers in the industrial belt on the outskirts of Chennai where the Samsung India plant is located, fearing the strike could become a trigger for a broader working-class mobilization that could rapidly escape their control.[8] This reveals the unions’ function with clarity. When struggle threatens to generalize beyond the limits of contractual negotiation, unions intervene to suppress it. They also came under intense political pressure from their close political allies in Tamil Nadu’s DMK-led state government, which backed Samsung management throughout the struggle.[8]

The CITU’s tactics throughout the strike systematically isolated the Samsung workers. The union refused to challenge management’s creation of a divisive hierarchy among workers by appealing for support from contract and trainee workers and fighting for their right to secure, well-paying jobs.[8] Throughout the four-week strike, the company was able to continue production using non-permanent workers and to hire additional temporary workers with the implicit threat that the strikers would be replaced. The union’s acceptance of the distinction between permanent and temporary workers enabled capital to maintain production while isolating the strike to a minority segment.

The DMK repeatedly unleashed police violence against the Samsung workers, and for months the state Labour Department refused to recognize the union, although union recognition is a statutory right under India’s constitution.[9] Due to an anti-worker court order, the Samsung workers were barred from picketing and had to set up a “strike” tent almost a mile from the plant. On October 8, 2024, police attacked the workers and tore down the tent.[9] The unions did not mobilize solidarity actions in response to this repression. Instead, they negotiated the strike’s termination, leaving workers vulnerable to management retaliation. Emboldened by this betrayal, Samsung intensified its campaign of harassment, refusing to pay most permanent workers their annual bonus for 2024 and systematically transferring known militants to more arduous jobs.[8]

Historically, trade union politics have largely been absorbed into the framework of social democracy, operating within the constraints and discipline of capital. This pattern is observable globally, not just in India. While the traditional role of unions was to protect workers’ interests, the current dynamics particularly as capitalist democracies reveal their class character suggest a reversal the union bureaucracy now seems to expect workers to protect the union and its leadership to maintain its equation from corporations.

 The Ritual of Mass Strikes

The pattern of massive one-day strikes called by central trade unions has become a ritualized form of protest that channels working-class anger into controlled, temporary disruptions that capital can accommodate. In July 2024, over 250 million workers struck against anti-worker policies and privatization.[10] Across many states including Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, West Bengal, Assam, Punjab, Bihar, and Jharkhand, a complete shutdown was observed in several regions.[11] Coal mining operations in most states came to a halt, and services in banking, insurance, manufacturing and petroleum refineries were impacted.[10]

The scale appears impressive, yet the limitation to a single day transforms resistance into spectacle. Capital absorbs the loss of one day’s production, adjusts schedules accordingly, and proceeds with restructuring. The February 2024 strike aimed to highlight real issues ahead of general elections, with demands including withdrawal of the four labour codes, fixing minimum wage at INR 26,000, and restoration of the old pension scheme.[12] These demands were not met, elections occurred, and the codes were implemented eight months later.

The November 2020 strike, claimed to involve 250 million workers and considered the largest strike in world history, saw five states completely shut down.[13] Workers presented seven demands including direct cash transfers, free grain rations, and expansion of employment guarantee schemes.[14] Yet this massive mobilization yielded no fundamental change in the trajectory of labour code implementation. The strike occurred, the government dismissed union assertions, and capital continued its restructuring.

The Joint Platform of Central Trade Unions and Federations alleged the four Labour Codes were designed to “suppress and cripple the trade union movement, increase working hours, snatch workers’ right to collective bargaining, right to strike, and decriminalise violation of labour laws by employers.”[15] This statement identifies real threats, but the unions’ response scheduling another one-day protest demonstrates they function to contain rather than escalate struggle. The predictability serves capital: unions announce protests weeks in advance, capital prepares contingencies, workers perform their token day of resistance, and production resumes.

State Repression and Union Acquiescence

Despite threats and repression by authorities and employers, public service workers mobilized in strength, yet the Modi government using COVID-19 as an excuse reacted with violence and widescale arrests.[10] Police used violent means to attempt to stop hundreds of thousands of workers and farmers demonstrating peacefully. Around 30,000 protesting workers were detained in Tamil Nadu alone during the July 2024 strike.[16]

The unions denounce this repression rhetorically yet remain wedded to the legal frameworks that enable it. The government undermined the tripartite structure by not hosting a labour conference since coming to power and by designating the right-wing Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh as chair of the L20 meetings.[15] The unions protest exclusion from consultation while accepting consultation itself as the appropriate mode of working-class representation. They seek restoration of their seat at the table rather than overturning the table.

The unions frame their opposition within constitutional and legal language. They appeal to India’s commitments in international human rights and labour rights forums, to statutory rights of union recognition, to proper tripartite procedures. This legalism disarms workers by teaching them that their struggles require state sanction, that spontaneous action outside legal channels is illegitimate, that the proper response to repression is to petition for inclusion in the mechanisms of repression.

The Missing Working-Class Response

Throughout this entire process, autonomous working-class organization remains conspicuously absent. The unions claim to represent workers yet workers themselves appear primarily as mobilized masses responding to union calls for one-day protests. Samsung workers initially formed their union on their own initiative in July 2024, then turned to CITU and affiliated with it in the mistaken belief that it would strengthen their struggle.[9] This pattern workers organize themselves, then subordinate their organization to established unions that subsequently betray them repeats across struggles.

The absence of territorial organization independent of trade union structures means workers have no sustained organs through which to develop strategy beyond the workplace. The fragmentation of the working class into small productive units that the labour codes facilitate finds no counter in corresponding territorial organization that could unite workers across enterprises and sectors. The unions maintain vertical structures connecting local unions to national federations, but these structures serve to transmit union directives downward rather than to generalize workers’ struggles horizontally.

The demands raised in mass strikes minimum wage increases, pension restoration, employment guarantees remain within the framework of improving conditions under wage labour rather than abolishing it. The call for a minimum wage of INR 26,000 per month, comprehensive loan waivers, and restoration of the old pension scheme addresses real needs yet locates the solution in state policy rather than in working-class power. The absence of any articulation connecting immediate defensive struggles to the necessity of overthrowing capitalism reflects decades of Stalinist ideological domination that has severed the link between economic and political struggle.

 The Union as State Apparatus

The trade unions function as essential organs of the capitalist state, not as working-class organizations that have been bureaucratized or betrayed. Their structure determines their function. As permanent institutions separate from the working class, mediating between capital and labour, they exist to regulate the sale of labour power, not to abolish it. The government held consultations with unions while implementing the codes, treating them as legitimate representatives whose opposition must be managed procedurally. The unions accept this role even while denouncing the outcome.

Reactions from industry have been mixed, with large manufacturers supporting the changes while the Association of Indian Entrepreneurs expressed concern about increased operating costs for small and midsize enterprises.[2] The unions do not distinguish their position from that of smaller capitalists worried about competitive disadvantage. Both frame opposition in terms of effects on the national economy rather than on the fundamental antagonism between capital and labour.

The unions’ integration into the state extends to their political alignments. Ten unions aligned with parties opposing Prime Minister Modi organized the protests, while the right-wing Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh aligned with Modi’s party called on states to implement the codes after consultations.[2] Trade unionism in India divides along parliamentary political lines, with unions functioning as labour wings of bourgeois parties. They compete not to lead revolutionary struggle but to demonstrate which can better manage labour relations for capital.

 Towards Autonomous Organization

The working class in India confronts not only direct capitalist exploitation and state repression but also the unions as primary obstacles to effective struggle. Breaking with trade unionism requires more than criticism of union leaders or attempts to democratize union structures. It requires the construction of autonomous organs of struggle that arise from and remain under the control of workers themselves.

These organs must take the form of assemblies, strike committees, and councils that exist only during periods of active struggle and that dissolve when struggle subsides rather than becoming permanent bureaucratic structures. They must unite all workers regardless of employment status permanent, temporary, contract, gig refusing the divisions that capital imposes and unions accept. They must organize territorially as well as within workplaces, recognizing that the dispersion of production into smaller units and the growth of precarious employment require forms of organization that transcend the factory walls.

Such organs cannot limit themselves to economic demands within the framework of wage labour. The codes demonstrate that capital in crisis cannot even maintain past concessions. Defensive struggles for wages, conditions, and job security immediately confront the necessity of attacking capital’s survival. The distinction between defensive and offensive struggle dissolves when capital’s crisis makes defense impossible without offense.

Revolutionary communists must intervene in working-class struggles not to build alternative unions or to capture union leadership but to introduce the revolutionary programme and to win advanced workers to organized political activity. The territorial groups and factory committees advocated by the communist left provide the organizational framework for this intervention, operating as emanations of the revolutionary party rather than as class-wide organs that must accommodate all political tendencies.

The implementation of India’s labour codes and the unions’ ritualized opposition to them demonstrate yet again that trade unions in capitalism’s decadent phase function as essential instruments of capitalist domination. Only autonomous working-class organization, guided by revolutionary politics and oriented toward the seizure of power, can mount effective resistance to capital’s attacks and point toward communism.

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FOOTNOTEZ

1. Al Jazeera. Indian trade unions oppose new labour codes, call for demonstrations. November 23, 2024.

2. Business Today. Explained: Why new labour codes have triggered protests and what unions are opposing. November 23, 2024.

3. NewsX. India Rolls Out Implementation Of New Codes To Reform Labour Laws. November 21, 2025.

4. India Guide. India’s New Labor Codes Enactment Status and Delayed Implementation. Accessed November 2024.

5. Lexology. Update on implementation of new labour codes. December 30, 2024.

6. Business Standard. Trade unions slam new labour codes as ‘deceptive fraud’, plan protests. November 22, 2024.

7. Dawn. India trade unions condemn new labour codes, plan nationwide protests. November 23, 2024.

8. World Socialist Web Site. Stalinist-led CITU orders end to Samsung India strike leaving 23 suspended workers in the lurch. March 27, 2025.

9. Peoples Dispatch. Months after indefinite strike, Samsung workers in India register their union. January 30, 2025.

10. Public Services International. India: Millions of Workers Strike Against Anti-Worker Policies and Privatisation.

11. PBS News. Hundreds of thousands of workers across India go on daylong nationwide strike against Modi proposals. July 9, 2025.

12. IndustriALL. India: workers’ strike ahead of upcoming general elections. February 16, 2024.

13. IndustriALL. Over 250 million workers join national strike in India. November 26, 2020.

14. Wikipedia. 2020 Indian general strike.

15. ITUC-Asia Pacific. Solidarity in Action: Nationwide Mobilisation Against Anti-Worker, Anti-Farmer Policies in India.

16. International Banker. Why Did 250 Million Indian Workers Go on a One-Day National Strike? September 8, 2025.