Secure Today, Gone Tomorrow? Fixed-Term and Contract Employment of Women under the Industrial Relations Code, 2020 and the OSH Code, 2020

The Industrial Relations Code, 2020 permits fixed-term employment in all sectors and the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 restates the regulation of contract labour. Both have been enacted but are not yet in force. This paper analyses their likely effect on women workers, who are concentrated in contractual and temporary jobs. Using doctrinal analysis of the Codes, earlier statutes and Supreme Court decisions, together with literature on precarious work, it finds that parity of pay and early gratuity for fixed-term workers are welcome, but that expiry-based non-renewal, higher thresholds for retrenchment protection, residual principal-employer liability and restrictions on strikes may leave women exposed to pregnancy-related and retaliatory termination. The paper recommends written reasons for non-renewal, cumulative counting of service, express maternity entitlements and limits on repeated renewal.