Weakening The Rights of Working Journalists Under The labour Codes

Over the last several years, there has been a steep decline in the security of tenure of working journalists in India. The large number of journalists getting retrenched by major newspaper managements have been widely reported. ,   In an important report on attacks on journalists during 2014-19, it was noticed that “With the increasing corporatisation of the media, journalists on the frontlines of newsgathering are dogged by acute and increasing precarity, i.e. lack of job-security and increasing job losses. There has been almost a wholesale contractualisation and casualisation of journalistic work over the past two decades.”

This goes hand-in-hand with the fact that it has become dangerous to reject the official narrative of incidents, which is what free journalism often must entail. The repercussions for independent journalism in our country range from physical attacks to criminal action under sedition laws. For our purposes, one of the important repercussions of the erosion of press freedom, together with the corporatization of media, is the victimisation of journalists who speak out. Just remember senior journalist Rajdeep Sardesai with India Today, whose pay for an entire month was docked, while also being taken off air, due to a so-called “incorrect” tweet on Twitter and announcement on TV regarding the death of a farmer.

The role of independent media in a democracy cannot be understated. The media enables the often-unheard twin of the fundamental right to Freedom of Speech and Expression, which is the right of the public to know and to be informed. This is crucially required, to enable the public participation in a democracy. In fact, the Supreme Court of India in Express Newspapers (Pvt) Ltd. v. Union of India [(1959) SCR 12 wrote that “Working journalists are but the vocal organs and the necessary agencies for the exercise of the right of free speech and expression..”.

While the amelioration of conditions of journalists is no doubt important per se, it is this context that gives a deeper significance to the protection of labour rights of working journalists. It may not be wrong to say that diluting the rights of journalists today will enable victimisation, and will effectively contribute to controlled and censored media narrative as journalists are fired for speaking out, or perhaps even more dangerously, will push towards self- censorship.

The rights of working journalists trace to the Working Journalists and other Newspaper Employees (Conditions of Service) and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1955, which is now to be repealed by the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 [‘the OSH Code’]. The OSH Code is one of 4 Labour Codes being sought to be brought in by the Central Government in the interest of ‘ease of doing business’, which collectively repeal 44 existing enactments. The Codes are far from benign; they remove significant protections of workers across the board in the name of streamlining.

Insofar as working journalists are concerned, the Labour Codes maintain only a few of their specific existing protections while largely clubbing journalists under the ambit of “worker”, in a manner that will reduce statutory entitlements.

One of the important provisions that continues to exist is the limitation of working hours of journalists to 144 hours in 4 weeks, or effectively 6 hours a day in a 6-day working week. Moreover, mandates for paid leave are retained. The Codes also expand the definition of ‘working journalists’ to cover electronic/digital media.

Regrettably, if predictably, the Codes otherwise are adverse to the interests of journalists in a number of ways.

Firstly, the prerequisites of retrenchment under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, which applies to industrial workers, are prior one months’ notice (or payment in lieu of notice for the period), retrenchment compensation and notice upon the Government. The 1955 Act extended these prerequisites to working journalists, while modifying the notice period to six months in the case of an editor and three months in the case of any other working journalist. However, this modification is done away with and working journalists are clubbed with industrial workers in the Code. This means that working journalists would only be entitled to one months’ notice in establishment with upto 300 workers or 3 months’ notice in establishments with 300+ workers. There is no special provision for editors.

Secondly, journalists employed mainly in a supervisory position are now wholly excluded from entitlements as workers under the OSH Code. Previously, the 1955 Act only excluded workers employed in supervisory capacity if he performed functions mainly of managerial nature.

Thirdly, the mandate for a wage board that would fix and revise rates of wages for working journalists under the Act is done away with. The wages fixed by the Wage Boards were not analogous to minimum wages, but were decided while considering “cost of living, the prevalent rates of wages for comparable employment, the circumstances relating to the newspaper industry in different regions of the country”
etc. Now, there will be no wage board, and journalists are treated as other workers entitled in law only to minimum wages. Therefore, even a profitable corporate media conglomeration would be statutorily mandated to only pay minimum wages.

Fourthly, a consequence of the removal of the Wage Boards is the deletion of an important protection in the 1955 Act. This was a protection against dismissal, discharge or retrenchment due to the Managements liability to pay wages at the rate specified by the wage board. Now, there is not even a mandate to pay rates higher than minimum wages.

Fifthly, a provision of the 1955 Act, enabling the working journalist to apply to the government for recovery of the money due under the Act, has been deleted and replaced with the standard recovery proceedings applicable for industrial workers. Those recovery proceedings pertain only to money due under a settlement or an award or under the provisions of Chapters of the IR Code pertaining to layoff, retrenchment, closure etc. So, non-payment of wages is no longer recoverable through the government, but would be recoverable as non-payment of wages under Wage Code.

Sixthly, the 1955 Act mandated provision of gratuity amount to all working journalists regardless of the size of the establishment, though the gratuity amount would be less in case of establishments with 6 or fewer employees. Now, the gratuity amount would be limited in the SS Code to establishments with ten or more workers. Journalists working in smaller establishments would have no statutory entitlement to gratuity.

As recently as 2014, a Full Bench of the Supreme Court in ABP Pvt. Ltd. v. Union of India [AIR 2014 SC 1228] rejected the constitutional challenge to the validity of the 1955 Act where it was argued that with the passage of time, the Act had become obsolete. It must be acknowledged that the repercussions of the dilution of rights of journalists will be substantial. This will not only effect journalists in their individual capacity but, on a larger scale, will be used as part of the capitalist model of growing economic precarity that may have unexpected implications on the right to know of the public.