New Labour Codes Wipe Out 70 Years Of Hard-Won Rights For Working Journalists
When the Central government unveiled its new Labour Codes in November 2025 through full-page advertisements celebrating reform and self-reliance, it projected the changes as historic and worker-friendly.
However, behind the official messaging lay a troubling development that largely went unnoticed by the public.
With the enforcement of the new labour framework, working journalists and other newspaper employees lost the statutory protections they had enjoyed continuously since 1955.
For more than seventy years, journalists in India were governed by special labour laws that recognised the distinct nature of their profession. These laws ensured fair wages, regulated working hours, provided social security, and offered protection against arbitrary termination.
The coming into force of the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020, has effectively dismantled this legal framework without offering any equivalent safeguards in its place.
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The roots of these protections date back to the early years following independence. When the Industrial Disputes Act was enacted in 1947, working journalists were left outside its scope, even though other employees in newspaper establishments were covered.
This left journalists vulnerable, dependent on circulation-linked pay structures and without access to labour dispute mechanisms. Strong trade unions within the press raised concerns, leading the Central government to appoint a Press Commission to examine the issue.
The Press Commission found that journalists worked under poor and uncertain conditions and required statutory protection. Acting on its recommendations, Parliament enacted the Working Journalists and Other Newspaper Employees (Conditions of Service) Act in 1955.
This legislation transformed the legal status of journalists by bringing them within the ambit of labour law while granting them special protections suited to their professional responsibilities.
It regulated working hours, ensured paid leave, provided gratuity and provident fund benefits, and introduced higher compensation in cases of retrenchment. Importantly, it empowered the government to fix wages through independent wage boards.
Newspaper owners challenged this law, arguing that it violated press freedom. In 1958, the Supreme Court rejected this claim and upheld the Act, affirming that protecting journalists’ working conditions did not undermine freedom of expression.
While the Court struck down one provision relating to wage fixation under the Industrial Disputes Act, Parliament swiftly responded by enacting the Working Journalists (Fixation of Rates of Wages) Act, 1958.
This enabled the constitution of wage boards, which over the next seven decades delivered multiple awards ensuring fair and periodically revised pay for journalists and non-journalist employees alike. Even the most recent wage board award was upheld by the Supreme Court as late as 2014.
This long-established system began to unravel when the government decided to consolidate India’s labour laws into four broad codes. Between 2019 and 2020, 29 separate labour enactments were merged, despite strong opposition from trade unions across the political spectrum.
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The Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code subsumed thirteen existing laws, including both Acts that specifically protected working journalists.
Although the Code retains definitions for newspapers and working journalists, it fails to incorporate the substantive protections that existed under the earlier laws.
With the repeal of the Working Journalists Acts, there is now no dedicated legislation governing journalists’ service conditions or wage fixation. The Code applies general provisions meant for all industries, without recognising the unique demands and ethical responsibilities of journalism.
As a result, journalists no longer have a statutory wage board to determine fair pay. Special provisions relating to working hours, night work, rest periods, gratuity eligibility, enhanced retrenchment compensation and mandatory standing orders have disappeared.
Even the long-recognised right of journalists to challenge a resignation tendered on grounds of conscience, a safeguard designed to protect editorial independence, finds no place in the new legal framework.
The practical effect of these changes is that working journalists have been pushed back to the legal position that existed before 1955.
While non-journalist employees may still seek protection under general labour laws, journalists now stand stripped of the special recognition once accorded to their profession.
The hard-won gains achieved through decades of legislative effort, judicial affirmation and collective struggle have been erased at a stroke.
What has occurred is not a mere technical consolidation of laws but a fundamental rollback of labour rights in the media sector.
At a time when journalism faces unprecedented economic and political pressure, the withdrawal of statutory protection weakens not only journalists as workers but also the institutional independence of the press itself.
(With inputs from The LEAFLET))
