J&K's Four Labour Codes Are Nearly Live: What Changes for Your First Job in Jammu

On Thursday, J&K's Chief Secretary Atal Dulloo sat down with the Finance, Law and Labour departments to go through a piece of paperwork that will eventually decide what your first payslip looks like. The meeting was about the four new Labour Codes — and how much longer J&K has to wait before all four are fully live here.

It is not a glamorous story. It is, however, the single biggest change to the rules governing Indian workplaces in decades, and most of the people it affects most — first-jobbers, delivery riders, shop assistants, interns, contract staff on a college campus — have never been told what is in it.

So what actually are the Labour Codes?

India used to run on 29 separate central labour laws, written at different times, often contradicting each other. Parliament folded all 29 into four Codes:

• The Code on Wages, 2019 — minimum wages, payment of wages, bonus, equal remuneration.

• The Industrial Relations Code, 2020 — hiring, firing, unions, disputes, standing orders.

• The Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 — safety, hours, leave, welfare facilities.

• The Code on Social Security, 2020 — provident fund, ESI, gratuity, maternity benefit, and — new — gig and platform workers.

The major provisions took effect across the country on 21 November 2025. But a central Code only becomes usable once the state or UT writes the detailed rules underneath it. That is the stage J&K is at now.

Where has J&K got to?

Two down, two to go. The review confirmed that J&K has already notified its rules under the Industrial Relations Code and the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code.

The other two — the Code on Social Security and the Code on Wages — are at the final hurdle. Their draft rules were pre-published after the Lieutenant Governor's approval, which opens a window for the public and for employers, unions and industry bodies to file objections. The Social Security draft drew 27 objections; the Wages draft drew five. Those have been examined and are being disposed of, and the Labour Department told the meeting it is targeting final publication within about ten days.

Dulloo's stated aim for the transition was that it should "strengthen workers' welfare and social security while promoting transparency, industrial harmony and a more efficient regulatory environment."

What changes for a 22-year-old in Jammu?

Five things are worth knowing, because several of them are rights you can actually ask for.

1. You are supposed to get an appointment letter. Under the new framework a written appointment letter becomes mandatory for all workers. If you are working at a café on Gandhi Nagar, a coaching centre, a showroom or a private clinic on a verbal understanding and a WhatsApp roster — which is the norm for a very large share of first jobs in this city — that is the provision to know about. An appointment letter is what turns "they said they'd pay me twelve thousand" into something you can prove.

2. Gig and delivery work is inside the system for the first time. The Code on Social Security creates a distinct category for gig and platform workers and provides for schemes covering life and disability cover, accident insurance, health and maternity benefit, and old-age protection. These are funded largely by a levy on the aggregators themselves — 1 to 2 per cent of annual turnover, capped at 5 per cent of what the platform pays out to its gig workers — routed into a social security fund. Worth being precise about the limit: gig workers sit in their own chapter and are not brought inside provident fund, ESI or gratuity, which still attach to employees.

3. A statutory wage floor, for everybody. The Code on Wages extends minimum-wage protection to all workers rather than only to listed "scheduled employments", and builds in a national floor wage below which no state's minimum can fall.

4. Fixed-term staff get gratuity faster. A fixed-term employee becomes eligible for gratuity after one year of service, instead of the five years an ordinary employee has to complete. If you are on a one- or two-year contract at a project, an institute or an NGO, that is a real change.

5. Two portals replace a filing cabinet. J&K has agreed to come onto Shram Suvidha, a single-window system for registration, licensing, annual returns and inspections, and Samadhan, where an industrial dispute or grievance can be filed and tracked online. For a young worker, Samadhan is the relevant one: it is meant to mean a complaint does not require knowing which office in which building to walk into.

The catch worth understanding

The wage headline comes with a caveat specific to J&K. The UT's own minimum wage rates were last revised on 12 October 2022, under S.O. 513, and that revision runs until October 2027. Asked in the Assembly's budget session this February about the next revision, the Deputy Chief Minister's position was that any further revision "will be done as and when the GoI notifies and implements the National Floor Wages under Code on Wages 2019."

Read that alongside the review and the sequence becomes clear: J&K's minimum wage is, in effect, waiting on the Code on Wages machinery to finish turning. The rules being finalised now are the thing standing between a four-year-old wage notification and the next one.

What to watch, and when

• The next ten days or so: final publication of J&K's rules under the Code on Wages and the Code on Social Security. That is when the framework becomes complete here.

• After that: whether the national floor wage is notified, which is the trigger the UT has tied its own minimum wage revision to.

• Onboarding of Shram Suvidha and Samadhan: the practical test of whether filing a grievance actually gets easier.

None of this arrives as an announcement addressed to you. It arrives as a line in a gazette, and then, months later, as an appointment letter someone hands you without being asked. Knowing it is coming is most of the advantage.

Sources: The Tribune — "Chief Secretary reviews rollout of new labour codes in J&K"; Kashmir Reader — "CS reviews implementation of new Labour Codes in J&K"; Greater Kashmir — "Minimum wages revised across J&K in 2022"; Ministry of Labour and Employment, Government of India.