New Labour Law: daily Ten hours duty, weekly Two days holidays

New Labour Law: The draft amendment to the Karnataka Shops and Commercial Establishments Act, 1961, proposes to increase working hours to 10 hours per day and 48 hours per week. New Labour Law: daily 10 hours duty, weekly 2 days holidays.

The Karnataka government has proposed to amend the Karnataka Shops and Commercial Establishments Act, 1961, through which it intends to increase the daily working hours from the current nine hours to 10 hours and allow more additional working hours.

The Karnataka Shops and Commercial Establishments Act, 1961 is a law regulating working hours and labour conditions in shops and commercial establishments in the state. It sets out the legal framework for how long employees can work and how overtime, records and compliance are managed.

What are the key amendments?

The new amendment aims to simplify procedures such as record management and certification, especially for small organizations. Supporters of the measure believe it will increase the ease of doing business and legitimize working time patterns already in practice.

Working hours can be increased to 10 hours per day and 48 hours per week. Total working hours, including overtime, must not exceed 12 hours per day. An employee can work 144 hours of overtime in a continuous period of three months. Currently, it is 50 hours. Organizations with less than 10 employees are exempted from this act.

The biggest beneficiaries of the proposed amendment to the Act will be companies in the Information Technology and Information Technology-Enabled Services (IT and ITES) sectors. These include businesses that offer software services, backend IT operations, hardware sales, and similar services.

These companies are expected to benefit from the formal extension of working hours and the easing of compliance burdens.

What are the concerns?

Labour unions argue that the move legalizes existing violations and could lead to worker exploitation, including wage theft, due to poor enforcement procedures and staffing shortages at the Labor Department. The law is unclear about increasing wages in line with increased working hours.

This State had 10 hours shift:

After the central government passed four labour codes in 2019 and 2020 allowing for increased working hours, the BJP-ruled states of Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand have passed legislations. Recently, the Andhra Pradesh Cabinet approved increasing the working hours to 10 hours a day.

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