For a cashew worker in Kollam, a handloom worker in Kannur or a young employee on a fixed-term contract in Thiruvananthapuram, the debate over India’s new Labour Codes has an immediate meaning. Will wages be paid on time? Will a familiar welfare benefit survive? What happens if employment ends suddenly? Keralam’s response to the Codes should begin with these questions, not with the drafting of another set of forms.

On 22 October, Chief Minister V D Satheesan met representatives of 22 trade unions in the presence of Labour Minister Bindu Krishna. The government announced a committee to recommend how the State should frame rules under the four Central Labour Codes. The Labour Department Secretary is to convene it, with the Additional Secretary of the Law Department, seven trade union representatives and Labour Department officials among its members. Its report is due within ten days of the committee's formation. That is a demanding timetable for decisions affecting very different kinds of employment.

The national position is already settled in one important respect. The four Codes, covering wages, industrial relations, social security and occupational safety, took effect on 21 November 2025. They consolidated 29 Central labour laws; the Central government subsequently notified rules in May 2026. Keralam's continuing consultations concern the State rules, safeguards and methods of enforcement. Describing the Codes as though their national commencement still awaits a State decision would mislead readers.

Where state powers begin and end?

Labour is a subject on which both Parliament and State Legislatures can make laws. That does not give a State government unrestricted freedom to rewrite a Central statute through rules issued by a department. A rule can fill in matters entrusted to the State by the Code; it cannot lawfully cancel an obligation or alter a threshold fixed by Parliament merely because the State disagrees with it.

Consider the much-discussed threshold for prior government permission in certain cases of lay-off, retrenchment and closure. Section 77 of the Industrial Relations Code, 2020, applies the relevant chapter to specified industrial establishments with an average of at least 300 workers per working day over the preceding twelve months, subject to its statutory qualifications. The provision permits the appropriate........

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