BLL301 | Labour Law II

This Core Course is a compulsory course mandated by Bar Council of India. It is an extension of the Introductory Course on Labour Law-I in which fundamental concepts of labour law in India were taught along with regulations governing Industrial Relations.

This Course develops on those fundamental concepts to introduce students to the key employment-based social security regimes in India, the laws governing payment of wages and the occupational safety and health regimes in India. Additionally, the course introduced students to the constitutional and the statutory standards seeking to operationalise the right to equality at the workplace. The course also takes into account the reality of organised industrial sector being at the periphery of Indian labour landscape. The vast majority of the total workforce in India are employed in the informal sector or the unorganised sector – comprising of units operating at low level of organisation, having limited capital and having flexible relationships of employment. Consequently, the course shall introduce students to some of the key challenges in regulation of informal work, explore few legislations and cases that have relevance for informal work and look at domestic work as one concrete example of a type of informal work and the scope for regulation therein.

It is reiterated that the course has been designed to underscore the interconnectedness of different elements of labour protection and will frequently draw upon the conceptual building blocks discussed in the previous trimester.

The Course will be taught through a combination of lectures and discussion around cases. For some of the modules, there would be an article/book-chapter introducing the broader context which would be followed by cases.

The Course shall seek to introduce the students to the changes proposed by the Social Security Code 2020, the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 and the Wage Code 2019 through a comparison with the existing statutory regimes.