Amendment in Labour Laws 2010- ESI Act, 1948 in India

Employees’ State Insurance (Amendment) Act, 2010

The Government of India through its notification in the official gazette dated: 25^th May, 2010 has enacted The Employees’ State Insurance (Amendment) Act, 2010 to amend the earlier ESIC Act, 1948. The ESIC (Amendment) Act, 2010 has received assent of the President   on 24^th May 2010.

Further, as per the Government of India Gazette Notification No. S.O.  1296(E) dated: 1^st June 2010, the Central Government has appointed the 1^st day of June, 2010, as the date on which the said Act, except Section 18 thereof, shall come into force. Amended Section 18 comes into force on 3^rd July, 2010.

Following inter alia, are the salient feature of the   Employees’ State Insurance (Amendment) Act, 2010. 

1. These amendments will substantially improvise the medical and other benefits under the Scheme.  Emphasis has been given for development and expansion of infrastructure for augmenting the benefits under the Scheme. 

2. APPRENTICES COVERED:  

Benefits under the scheme have also been extended to apprentices and trainees employed under Apprentice Act and Standing Order Act. 

3.  POWER TO APPROPRIATE GOVERNMENT;

The appropriate Government is empowered to extend the provisions of ESIC Act 1948 to any other establishment or class of establishments, industrial, commercial, agricultural or otherwise after giving one month’s notice of its intention of doing so by notification in Official Gazette instead of notice period of six months. 

4. DEFINITION OF DEPENDENT EXPANDED:

Definition of “dependents” as contained in clause 6A of section 2 of the Act has been extended to enlarge the number of beneficiaries under the act such as:

A widow, a legitimate or adopted son below the age of 25 years and an unmarried legitimate or adopted daughter.

The age limit of the dependants has been enhanced from 18 to 25. 

5.  Dependent parents as per definition of “family” has been substituted so as to include;

“A minor brother or sister wholly dependent upon the earnings of the insured person in case the insured person is unmarried and his or her parents are not alive”.  It has been also clarified that dependent parents to include “Dependent parents, whose income from all sources does not exceed such income as prescribed by the Central Government”. 

6. SMALL FACTORIES ALSO ARE COVERED:

    The definition of Factory under Section 2(12) has been amended to expand coverage of smaller factories.  The amended Act covers all factories, which employ 10 or more persons irrespective of the fact whether the manufacturing process is being carried out with the aid of the power or without the aid of the power. 

7. INSPECTORS RE-DESIGNATED AS SOCIAL SECURITY OFFICERS:

    The designation of Inspector has been re-designated as “Social Security Officer” to enroll them as facilitator of the Scheme rather than to act as mere inspectors.   

8. VRS EMPLOYEES ALSO COVERED:

Medical benefits to the insured person and his spouse have been extended under circumstances where insured person retires under Voluntary Retirement Scheme or takes premature retirement.  In the earlier   Act the benefit was applicable only on attaining the age of superannuation. Proviso to sub section 3 of section 56 has been substituted to provide the same. 

9. NOTIONAL EXTENSION OF PREMISES:

Accident occurring to an insured person while commuting from his residence to the place of employment and vice-a-versa shall be deemed to have arisen out of and in the course of employment for the purpose of benefit under the Act.  A new section 51-E has been added for this purpose. 

10   NORGANIZED SECTOR EMPLOYEES COVERED:

A new Chapter V-A has been added to enable provision for extending medical care to non insured persons against payment of user-charges to facilitate providing medical care to the below poverty line (BPL) families and other un-organized sector workers covered under the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY).

10.   Exemption of a factory or establishment or class of factories or establishments from the operation of this Act will be granted only if the employees in such factories or establishments are otherwise in receipt of benefits substantially similar or superior to the benefits provided under this Act. 

11.   Section 91 A of the Act is amended to removing. retrospective grant of exemption from the provision of the Act.

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Amendments in Labour Laws -2010 in India - ID Act

THE INDUSTRIAL DISPUTES (AMENDMENT) ACT, 2010 No.24 OF 2010

[18 th August, 2010]

MINISTRY OF LABOUR AND EMPLOYMENT NOTIFICATION

New Delhi, the 15th September, 2010

S.O. 2278(E).- In exercise of the powers conferred by sub-section (2) of Section 1 of the

Industrial Disputes (Amendment) Act, 2010 (24 of 2010), the Central Government hereby appoints the 15 th Day of September, 2010, as the date on which the said Act shall come into force.

[F.No.S-11012/1/2007-IR(PL)] RAVI MATHUR, Addl. Secy.

An Act further to amend the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947.

Be it enacted by Parliament in the Sixtieth Year of the Republic of India as follows:-

1. (1) This Act may be called the Industrial Disputes (Amendment) Act, 2010.

(2) It shall come into force on such date as the Central Government may, by notification in the Official Gazette, appoint.

2. In the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 (hereinafter referred to as the principal Act), in section 2, -.(i) in clause (a),- (a) in sub-clause (i), for the words “major port, the Central Government, and”, the words “major port, any company in which not less than fifty-one per cent of the paid-up share capital is held by the Central Government , or any corporation, not being a corporation referred to in this clause, established by or under any law made by Parliament, or the Central public sector undertaking , subsidiary companies set up by the principal undertaking and autonomous bodies

owned or controlled by the Central Government, the Central Government and” shall be

substituted: (b) for sub-clause (ii), the following sub-clause shall be substituted, namely:-

“(ii) in relation to any other industrial dispute , including the State public sector undertaking, subsidiary companies set up by the principal undertaking and autonomous bodies owned or controlled by the State Government, the State Government.”;

Provided that in case of a dispute between a contractor and the contract labour employed through the contractor in any industrial establishment where such dispute first arose, the appropriate Government shall be the Central Government or the State Government, as the case may be, which has control over such industrial establishment.”;

(ii) in clause (5), in sub-clause (iv), for the words “one thousand six hundred rupees”, the

words “ten thousand rupees” shall be substituted.

3. Section 2A of the principal Act shall be numbered as sub-section (1) thereof and after subsection (l) as so numbered, the following sub-sections shall be inserted, namely:-

“(2) Notwithstanding anything contained in section 10, any such workman as is specified in sub-section (1) may, make an application direct to the Labour Court or Tribunal for adjudication of the dispute referred to therein after the expiry of forty five days from the date he has made the application to the Conciliation Officer of the appropriate Government for conciliation of the dispute, and in receipt of such application the Labour Court or Tribunal shall have powers and Jurisdiction to adjudicate upon the dispute, as if it were a dispute referred to it by the appropriate Government in accordance with the provisions of this Act and all the provisions of this Act shall apply in relation to such adjudication as they apply in relation to an industrial dispute referred to it by the appropriate Government.

(3) The application referred to in sub-section (2) shall be made to the Labour Court or Tribunal before the expiry of three years from the date of discharge, dismissal, retrenchment or otherwise termination of service as specified in sub-section (1).”

4. In section 7 of the principal Act, in sub-section (3), after clause (e), the following clauses shall be inserted, namely:-

“(f) he is or has been a Deputy Chief Labour Commissioner (Central) or Joint Commissioner of the State Labour Department , having a degree in law and at least seven years’ experience in the labour department after having acquired degree in law including three years of experience as Conciliation Officer:

Provided that no such Deputy Chief Labour Commissioner or Joint Labour Commissioner shall be appointed unless he resigns from the service of the Central Government or State Government, as the case may be, before being appointed as the presiding officer; or

(g) he is an officer of Indian Legal Service in Grade III with three years’ experience in the grade.”

5. In section 7A of the principal Act, in sub-section (3), after clause (aa), the following clauses shall be inserted, namely:-

“(b) he is or has been a Deputy Chief Labour Commissioner (Central) or Joint Commissioner of the State Labour Department, having a degree in law and at least seven years’ experience in the labour department after having acquired degree in law including three years of experience as Conciliation Officer: Provided that no such Deputy Chief Labour Commissioner or Joint Labour Commissioner shall be appointed unless he resigns from the service of the Central Government or State Government, as the case may he, before being appointed as the presiding officer; or (c) he is an officer of Indian Legal Service in Grade III with three years’ experience in the grade.”

6. After section 9B of the principal Act, for chapter IIB, the following Chapter shall be substituted namely:-

CHAPTER II B

GRIEVANCE REDRESSAL MACHINERY

9C. (l) Every industrial establishment employing twenty or more workmen shall have one or more Grievance Redressal Committee for the resolution of disputes arising out of individual grievances.

(2) The Grievance Redressal Committee shall consist of equal number of members from the employer and the workmen.

(3) The chairperson of the Grievance Redressal Committee shall be selected from the employer and from among the workmen alternatively on rotation basis every year.

(4) The total number of members of the Grievance Redressal Committee shall not exceed more than six:

Provided that there shall be, as far as practicable, one woman member if the Grievance Redressal Committee has two members and in case the number of members are more than two, the number of women members may be increased proportionately.

(5) Notwithstanding anything contained in this section, the setting up of Grievance Redressal Committee shall not affect the right of the workman to raise industrial dispute on the same matter under the provisions of this Act.

(6) The Grievance Redressal Committee may complete its proceedings within forty-five days on receipt of a written application by or on behalf of the aggrieved party.

(7) The workman who is aggrieved of the decision of the Grievance Redressal Committee may prefer an appeal to the employer against the decision of Grievance Redressal Committee and the employer shall, within one month from the date of receipt of such appeal, dispose off the same and send a copy of his decision to the workman concerned.

(8) Nothing contained in this section shall apply to the workmen for whom there is an established Grievance Redressal Mechanism in the establishment concerned.”

7. In section 11 of the principal Act, after sub-section (8), the following sub-sections shall be inserted, namely:-

“(9) Every award made, order issued or settlement arrived at by or before Labour Court or Tribunal or National Tribunal shall be executed in accordance with the procedure laid down for execution of orders and decree of a Civil Court under order 21 of the Code of Civil Procedure , 1908.

(10) The Labour Court or Tribunal or National Tribunal, as the case may be, shall transmit any award, order or settlement to a Civil Court having jurisdiction and such Civil Court shall execute the award, order or settlement as if it were a decree passed by it.”

8. In section 38 of the principal Act, in sub-section (2),-

(i) clause (ab) shall be omitted;

(ii) for clause (c), the following clause shall be substituted, namely:-

“(c) the salaries and allowances and the terms and conditions for appointment of the presiding officers of the Labour Court, Tribunal and the National Tribunal including the allowances admissible to members of Courts, Boards and to assessors and witnesses;”.

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How to Create More Value From Employee Surveys

CEOs often proclaim that "people are our most important asset." Yet many HR departments find themselves unable to play a significant part in translating these words into reality for several reasons:

a) Some HR departments rely so heavily on benchmarking that they fail to customize their strategies to their organization's unique circumstances, thereby almost guaranteeing they will, at best, stay average.

b) Others get too caught up in the flavor-of-the-month programs.

c) Many are so busy putting out fires they have no time to address what's truly important - drivers of business results.

d) Despite its potential, too often the only thing that comes out of the annual employee engagement survey is a big data dump with no real impact.

Analytics can ensure HR is not pigeonholed as non-strategic and out-of-touch. "It's no longer possible for HR departments or functions to ignore analytics," said Larry Costello, executive vice president, Tyco Fire and Security. "The forces bringing analytics to the forefront are simply too powerful to disregard."

Talent leaders can use a four-step process to create an HR analytics strategy that will transform the traditional engagement survey into a source of actionable business intelligence.

Step 1 - Create a smarter employee survey.

Traditional employee engagement or satisfaction surveys are not up to the task of producing actionable business intelligence. Engagement is necessary to produce great results, but it's not sufficient. For example, in the Harvard Business Review article "Manage Your Human Sigma," while describing an analysis of customer engagement at a multi-site retailer, Gallup researchers state, "Our working assumption was that at least a few of the top employee engagement stores would also be top customer engagement stores. We were wrong.

Just one store appeared on both lists."

There are two major deficiencies in most employee engagement surveys:

1. They pay too little attention to critical organization-level factors such as work processes, hiring processes and informal learning. These factors are big drivers of business results, but are typically not among the top employee engagement/satisfaction drivers. For this reason, they are under-measured in most surveys.

2. They miss the opportunity to tap into workforce wisdom about the drivers and impediments of what it takes for an organization to be a good seller and a good community and environmental steward - both of which are increasingly necessary to an organization's ability to outperform its competition.

Employee survey content should be expanded to include a broader set of questions that go beyond HR's current concept of employee engagement.

Step 2 - "Linkage analysis" to business outcomes.

Next, statistically link the data from the smarter employee survey to data on desired outcomes.

Linkage analysis can be done with soft outcomes data collected within a smarter employee survey, which includes engagement - including employees' intent to stay and willingness to recommend the organization to friends as a good place to work - as well as elements such as employees' reported ability to help the organization achieve its cost containment goals; and the extent to which employees report that the work environment supports excellent customer service.

Data on hard outcomes comes from outside the survey, such as sales, safety, turnover and customer satisfaction, and is then mapped to the survey. This involves aligning these outcomes to the survey responses of the employees who provided them. It is important to note that this mapping requires the survey be non-anonymous. Hence, creating business intelligence from a smarter employee engagement survey requires contracting with an independent third-party analytics firm, since failing to do so is likely to result in less-than-frank responses to a non-anonymous survey.

The specific statistical methodologies that should be used for the linkage analysis will depend on the outcome being analyzed. The techniques can range from complex multivariate analysis, such as logit regression or panel estimation techniques, for most individual-level data, to more straightforward univariate analysis - correlations and statistical testing of differences of means - for group data with small sample sizes.

However, it's important not to get hung up on the statistical nuances since there are plenty of experts who can help with this. The critical point is that linkage analysis is the missing connection that allows organizations to move beyond guesswork, hope and intuition on the people side of their business.

"Leveraging analysis that connects areas like employee engagement to important business results is the missing link," said Mary Humiston, senior vice president, global human resources, Applied Materials. "It is helping us to develop a strong fact-based HR strategy for driving improved business results. Identifying the unique human drivers of our business outcomes with precision and rigor is helping us to elevate our game."

Step 3 - Create a rigorous, fact-based process to identify the best areas of opportunity.

It's important to understand that benchmarking is not analytics. For example, knowing that an organization benchmarks at the 90th percentile on a specific survey item should not be cause for celebration - unless linkage analysis reveals that the specific item drives an important business outcome. And a low score on a specific survey item should only create significant concern if it drives a key outcome. Benchmarking provides little, if any, basis for creating a fact-based HR strategy.

Following a survey, many organizations spend lots of time working on their lowest-scoring items. They would therefore focus heavily on seeking to improve survey item A - the item with the lowest overall score.

However, if a second piece of information is added to the mix, a different conclusion emerges.

Remember survey item A with the lowest score? Turns out it's a negative predictor of sales and therefore is actually a poor target for improvement. The best area of focus turns out to be survey item B, which has the fourth-lowest score, but is both an important positive predictor of sales and still an area of relative weakness. While it might be tempting to wonder what the specific survey questions are that correspond to A and B, that would miss the point, which is that each organization must do its analytics homework to determine the survey items that are most important for it rather than accept a one-size-fits-all answer.

The content of the actual survey items in this example doesn't matter; the results will be different for every organization. That's the point of doing this analysis - to help organizations move beyond benchmarking and target survey items that are the most important predictors of their organization's business outcomes.

Step 4 - Make insightful and easy-to-understand recommendations.

Getting to step 3 can be challenging, since it helps move organizations beyond potentially misleading one-size-fits-all benchmarking measures. But to enjoy the full advantage of this breakthrough, effectively communicating the findings from the analysis is essential. Three points to keep in mind:

1. Avoid data dumps and the temptation to share everything learned in the course of the analysis.

2. Home in on the most important findings and implications, and focus on those.

3. Communicate simply and compellingly. This is as much art as science, but it's critical skill to create actionable business intelligence on the people side of the business.

The top areas of opportunity emerging from Step 3 provide a compelling business case to create a fact-based HR strategy to drive business results.

"At Applied Materials we are using analytics to convert both HR data and business data from information into actionable insights," said Angela Sheffield, head of global workforce planning at Applied Materials. "The executive team is very engaged - they are asking for more. It really helps them to understand the link between what goes on in HR and our business results and guides them to where the biggest levers are for improvement."

One of the real beauties of this approach is that it is possible to provide insightful, customized reports to each manager and offer specific recommendations for actions the manager should take - based on his or her specific pattern of results - to help that manager achieve his or her objectives.

Once this has been achieved, it is typically no longer necessary for HR to push the findings of the employee engagement survey onto the organization - the organization starts to pull for the analysis and insights. The move from push to pull is a significant breakthrough in HR's ability to help the organization be truly strategic.

There are powerful forces - in terms of both supply and demand - that are bringing HR analytics to the forefront. First, technology advances have made HR data available on a scale that was heretofore unimaginable. More importantly, the growing economic premium associated with superior human capital management means that HR strategy is simply too important to be left to gut and intuition. If HR doesn't step up to the plate, another part of the organization is sure to fill the void.

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