National Alliance for Social Security (NASS) is a membership-based alliance of 7 Trade unions/ Organizations across India founded in 2010 to generate collective interventions to assert the social security rights of informal workers. NASS, in association with FNV (Netherlands Trade Union Confederation) and its partners in India, who have a history of working with informal sector rights have come together to campaign for the social security rights of informal workers.
The Member Organizations in the alliance are;
- BWI - Building & Wood Workers’ International
- SEWA - Self-Employed Women’s Association.
- HNSA - Homenet South Asia.
- NADW - National Alliance Domestic Workers.
- NASVI - National Association of Street Vendors of India.
- ANUKATHAM
- NAAWU - National Alliance of Agriculture allied Workers Union (Andhra Pradesh VyAvasaya Vruthidarula Union, Telangana Vyavasaya Vruthidarula Union, and Karnataka Vyavasaya Vruthidarula Union – APVVU, TVVU & KVVU
Who are we
Indian labour platform incorporates the formal and informal workers of all sectors including agriculture, industries, services, manufacturing, and food processing. As per Economic Survey 2021-2022, 500 million workers are has been the part of Indian economy. The formal or organized economy sector provides employment in fixed, protected, and regular aspects under governmental, semi-governmental, and private authorities. A significant portion of workers in the Indian economy lay down under the unorganized sector which is around 88.81 percent of the total working population of India. The informal grey sector refers self- employed, unlicensed, and unregistered workers who are far away from social protection and social security. According to the reports of Ministry of Labour in India, the unorganized labour sector is classified into four groups based on the nature of employment, occupation, specially-distressed categories, and service categories. Occupational groups includes small and marginal farmers, landless agricultural laborers, leather workers, fishermen, beedi rolling, labelling and packing, building and construction workers, workers of stone quarries, workers in saw and oil mills, etc. Based on the nature of employment it includes attached agricultural labourers, contract and casual labourers, migrant workers, bonded labourers etc. The specially-distressed unorganized sector includes toddy tappers, loading workers, scavengers, drivers of animal-driven vehicles, etc. Domestic workers, newspaper vendors, barbers, vegetable and fruit vendors, pavement vendors, hand cart operators, etc includes in the service category. The informal workers constitute the significant labour force in India which holds Indian economy. Even though the sector is undergoing through various insecurities which challenges their social security.
NASS has completed a decade-long journey to carry forward the demand for social security for informal workers in the country. Even though the campaign started to influence the government and educate the people on the implementation of the Unorganised Workers Social Security Act, it has broadened the interventions to campaign for better formulations of the Social Security Code with the merger of 17 Labour Welfare Laws. Except 2 out of 17 Acts have been applicable only for organized workers in the country. The remaining two, the Unorganised Workers Social Security Act and the Construction Workers Welfare Act are only favorable legislations enacted by the government and now merged into the Code without being properly implemented.
In 2020, the central government brought out the 4 labour codes. The Codes are:
(1) Code on Wages talks about minimum wages for every worker, unorganized and contract laborers in the unorganized sector,
(2) Code on Industrial Relations aims at changing the rules binding on labour unions, handling labour disputes, terms of employment, lay-off, retrenchment policies, etc.,
(3) Code on Social Security and welfare expands the scope of the coverage of ESI (Employment State Insurance) to every worker in the country
(4) Code on Occupational Safety, health, and work conditions for Indian Labour.
When the Social Security Code draft was released for the public’s opinion, NASS asked an expert to create a report and conducted a webinar based on it, and submitted suggestions to the government. A position paper on the Social Security code was prepared with the help of an expert and was translated into local languages and distributed. Regular core committee meetings were held virtually and state-level platform meetings in some states were also conducted. The Social Security campaign was digitalized by supporting the workers with laptops. NASS is working for the sake of informal workers uplift.
The work of NASS was paused for a brief while in 2020 because of lockdown. But in June 2020 the coordinator was appointed and interventions were made to help informal workers during the pandemic beginning from June such as linking the workers to government services, educating them about the precautions to take during COVID-19, mobilizing support for the migrants, and sending them back to their state of origin and linking the suspected victims to the hospitals. Some of the member organizations such as SEWA and SAVE also carried out relief activities. In Telangana, help contact centers were set up for the migrants and WhatsApp groups were created to help migrants in returning to their states and to pass on any useful information. NASS also collected case studies in each state which were consolidated.