The One Thing #12: Focus on contract labor

As President of the Employers’ Federation of India (EFI) and also of the National HRD Network (NHRDN), I interact with many people across the country and across sectors. As I meet employees, managers, trade unions and people from the government, there is clearly an issue with respect to Industrial Relations that needs to be addressed.
Contract labor is here to stay. The problem is that we have not got the balance right between various aspects of the ecosystem in terms of costs and benefits, and the short- and long-term implications and this is creating problems in the system. In my view, while the path is unclear and there is no simple solution, we cannot any longer expect that it will get sorted on its own because it won’t.
The problem is not just about contract labor but about the wider use of non-permanent employees. While the problem might have a different shape and form in the manufacturing sector as opposed to the service sector, the basic issues and the solutions are similar.