Hours of Work, Holidays and Overtime

In one line

Eight hours a day, no more than six days a week, and twice the ordinary rate for overtime, which a worker cannot be made to do without his consent.

In exam wording: section 25 of the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code 2020 limits the working day to eight hours with intervals and spread overs as notified; section 26 forbids work on more than six days in any one week and provides for compensatory holidays; and section 27 requires wages at twice the ordinary rate for overtime, subject to the worker's consent.

Why the law has these at all

The eight hour day is the oldest demand in labour history and the reason for it is not only fatigue. A worker who works twelve hours has no life outside the work, cannot be trained, cannot organise and cannot rest enough to be safe.

But the interesting feature of this Chapter is what it does with the overtime rate, and it is worth naming. Twice the ordinary rate is not compensation for the extra effort. It is a price set high enough to make overtime uneconomic, so that the employer hires a second worker rather than working the first one longer. The proviso requiring the worker's consent does the same job from the other end.

And the whole Chapter turns on a word. The rights are given to a worker, defined in section 2(1)(zzl), which excludes a person employed mainly in a managerial or administrative capacity and a supervisor drawing more than eighteen thousand rupees a month. Those people are employees under section 2(1)(t) and are owed the duties in Chapter III, but they have no statutory eight hour day.

Some words this chapter uses

Spread over is the total time from the start to the end of a working day, including intervals, as distinct from the hours actually worked. Relay is a set of workers working during a particular period. Shift is the period a relay works. Running time, subsidiary work and period of mere attendance are defined in the Explanation to section 25(1) for motor transport workers. Adolescent takes its meaning from the Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act 1986.

Section 25(1): the eight hour day

No worker shall be required or allowed to work in any establishment or class of establishment for more than:

• (a) eight hours in a day; and
• (b) the period of work in each day shall be so fixed as not to exceed such hours, with such intervals and spread overs, as the appropriate Government notifies.

Note "required or allowed". The employer breaches the section by permitting a willing worker to exceed the limit, not only by ordering him to.