The ongoing factory workers’ protests in Noida’s industrial belt are one of the largest industrial labour mobilisations in recent times.

Violence has been documented as well: stone-pelting and attempts to breach police barricades, as well as a brutal police lathicharge.

After Haryana hiked wages for workers by 35% following protests in Faridabad, Gurugram, and Manesar, workers in Noida realised that their own wages were lower, a situation exacerbated by the pinch in LPG supplies.

Trade unions have demanded ₹18,000 to ₹25,000 a month — which the Uttar Pradesh government’s interim hike of around 21% did not meet — and fixed working hours and holidays and overtime pay.

The new Labour Codes that the Union government enforced from late 2025 allow a 12-hour single workday and specify wage floors but not actual wages, leaving them to the States.

As a result, the Codes have allowed employers in certain States to extract more work from the longer workday at or near the statutory minimum pay.

The share of contract labour in the formal manufacturing sector in India is the highest since 1997-98.

Ironically, the provisions of the Labour Codes encourage the sector to persist with contract labour rather than appreciate job security, while also imposing limits on worker strikes.

These, together with the energy crisis and increasing food prices, precipitated the protests.

In 2024, the Samsung workers’ strike in Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu, was similarly over low wages, unpaid overtime, and the company’s refusal to recognise unions.

More recently, workers at the IOCL Panipat refinery went on strike demanding an eight-hour workday, better wages, and safer working conditions, as did workers at the NTPC plant in Patratu, and Adani’s Raikheda plant in Raipur.

This is practically a wave in the Labour Codes regime, showing that labour rights are paper tigers — exacerbated by Yogi Adityanath’s claim that the protests were a conspiracy, followed by the interim hike.

A worker who spends one-sixth of his monthly income on cooking costs alone does not need to be radicalised to understand that his wage is insufficient.

Further, neither the State nor the Centre responded substantively to residential societies barring domestic workers who had joined the protests by displaying their photographs at the gates — a serious civil rights infraction.

Such heavy-handed responses by employers and societies indicate that the industrial climate is fraught with deep-seated grievances.

Only a fair and transparent system of wage fixation and an institutionalised mechanism for tripartite consultations between the government, employers, and trade unions can ensure industrial peace.

Without this, the cost of labour unrest will outweigh the benefits of industrial output.