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“We did it!” This was the jubilant closing note from Pratik Vaidya, Chief Vision Officer and Managing Director of Karma Management Global Consulting Solutions, as the three-part Labour Codes webinar series officially concluded on Friday, 11 December 2025. What began as an initiative to simplify India’s new labour framework turned into three insightful sessions filled with learning, thoughtful questions and meaningful conversations.
Pratik shared, “A heartfelt thank you to everyone who joined us live and engaged throughout the series, your participation made it truly rewarding.”
He also expressed deep gratitude to his eloquent speakers from the management team, Archit Kulkarni and Ms. Sadaf Khan, for guiding through each session with such clarity and expertise.
Below is a structured summary of the three sessions and the key themes that were discussed, debated and clarified with practical relevance for organisations and compliance teams.
India’s announcement of the four new labour codes on 21 November 2025 heralded a transformation in how we work and live, after a gap of over five decades, replacing the antiquated 29 existing labour laws. The session addressed legacy turbulence that continued for decades due to unresolved differences, ambiguity, confusion, misunderstanding and misinterpretation.
Pratik provided deep, insightful clarity on wage and employee definitions, supported by illustrations for interpretation of key sections in the wage code. Participants also received Karma Global’s recommended position on Provident Fund and gratuity basis, a topic that had generated mixed views across HR and compliance circles.
Many working numerical examples were shared, including how exclusions should be treated, moving participants into an active question-and-answer mode that cleared multiple obscurities.
The session unfolded scenarios around repealing acts versus legacy rules, mapping salary structures with the thumb rule, designing a new enforcement framework, timelines for full and final settlement, treatment of bonus and gratuity, wage slips and record keeping, equal remuneration and transgender inclusion, penalties and compounding provisions, conversion from inspector to facilitator, and other practical compliance touchpoints.
Part two focused on a subject close to many hearts: the health of retirement dues collected during an employee’s working life and disbursed in the twilight years of retirement. The session explained how conversion of multiple statutes into one unified social security framework changes coverage, inquiries, enforcement, and digital compliance.
The final session laid down a roadmap for those covered under factories and industrial undertakings. A key kickoff point was who gets covered under manufacturing factories and how other units such as IT and ITeS, hospitals, hotels, restaurants and similar establishments should be treated. The discussion drew strong attention to the difference between an employee and worker, and whether managerial staff and higher-level supervisors are covered.
Whether an organisation covered by Shops and Establishments can also be treated as an industrial establishment was addressed with convincing responses. Another key lens was compliance priorities for organisations with less than three hundred employees versus those above three hundred, with tips and tools for mapping and distinguishing organisational characteristics to build an IR compliance trajectory.
The OSH Code was presented as the heaviest code due to consolidation across factories, mines, dock workers, contract labour, inter-state migrants, construction, motor transport, plantations, beedi and cigar, journalists and audio-visual workers. Key takeaways included handling a single common licence by employer and contractor and the interplay when establishments operate as factories, engage contract labour and employ inter-state migrants.
Scenarios were discussed around contractors supplying labour and engaging inter-state migrants across multiple organisations that avail contractor services, helping participants understand how compliance should be operationalised across layered workforce models.
India’s social-security landscape has transformed significantly over the past decade, expanding coverage from just nineteen percent of the workforce in 2015 to over sixty-four percent in 2025. This rise has strengthened worker protection nationwide and earned global recognition for India’s progress in social welfare.
The implementation of the four Labour Codes marks the next decisive step in this journey. By widening the social-security net and ensuring portability of benefits across states and sectors, the Codes position workers, particularly women, youth, unorganised, gig and migrant labour, at the core of the nation’s labour governance framework.
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