SRINAGAR: The Omar Abdullah-led National Conference government will on Wednesday introduce the Jammu and Kashmir Shops and Establishments (Licensing, Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Bill, 2025, in the Legislative Assembly.
The bill seeks to prohibit discrimination against women in recruitment, permit women to work night shifts, and enhance safeguards for workers’ rights across establishments.
Deputy Chief Minister Surinder Kumar Choudhary, who is in charge of Labour & Employment, will introduce the Bill in the Assembly today to amend and consolidate the laws relating to the regulation of employment and other conditions of service of workers employed in shops and establishments and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto.
The autumn session of the Assembly is in session in Srinagar.
The Bill shall extend to the whole of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir and shall come into force on such date as the Government may by notification in the Official Gazette, appoint.
It shall apply to all the shops and establishments in Jammu and Kashmir.
The bill, which prohibits discrimination against women workers, states that no woman worker shall be discriminated against in matters of recruitment, training, transfers or promotions or wages.
“The woman worker with her consent, shall be allowed to work during night shifts in any establishment in which adequate protection of their dignity, honour and safety, protection from sexual harassment and their transportation from the establishment to the doorstep of their residence as may be prescribed are provided by the employer or his authorised representative or manager or supervisor,” it further said.
The Bill has fixed hours of work and is spread over.
“No adult worker shall be required or allowed to work in a shop or establishment for more than forty-eight hours in any week and eight hours in a day, and no worker shall be asked to work continuously for more than five hours unless he has been given a break of not less than half an hour. The working hours or period of weekly rest may be relaxed in case of work of an urgent nature with the previous permission of the Assistant Labour Commissioner,” it stated.
The Bill further states that the total number of hours of work in a shift, including the rest interval, shall not exceed ten and a half hours in any shop or establishment, and in case a worker is entrusted with an intermittent nature of work or urgent work, the spread over shall not exceed twelve hours.
“Any working hour beyond eight hours a day or forty-eight hours a week shall be treated as overtime and the total number of overtime hours shall not exceed one hundred and forty-four hours in a period of three months,” it states.
The Bill stresses that every employer shall issue an appointment letter to every employee at the time of engagement, indicating their terms of employment and conditions of service in accordance with the provisions of law.
“No employer shall dispense with the service of an employee who has been in continuous employment for not less than two hundred and forty days, without giving such person at least one month's notice in writing or wages in lieu of such notice. Provided that such notice shall not be necessary where the services of such employee are dispensed with for misconduct established as per the rules prescribed,” it stated.
The Bill states that no employee, who has been in the continuous employment of an employer for not less than two hundred and forty days, shall leave the service of such employer without giving him at least one month's notice in writing, and if he fails to give such notice, or gives notice of less than one month, he shall forfeit his wages for one month or for the number of days by which the notice falls short of one month as the case may be.
“Any employee in respect of whom the provisions of sub-section (l) are contravened may apply before Assistant Labour Commissioner and if he/she is satisfied that such person has been dismissed without sufficient cause, he may for the reasons recorded in writing, direct the employer to pay one and a half months wages as compensation to the persons dismissed and thereupon the employer shall pay the amount of compensation to such person. The amount of compensation payable under this section shall, for the purpose of its recovery, be deemed to be a fine imposed under this Act. Any person who has been awarded compensation under this section shall not bring any civil suit or proceedings in respect of the same claim, and no civil court shall entertain any such suit or proceedings,” it added.
The Bill also proposes that every worker engaged in a shop or establishment shall be entitled to a weekly holiday with wages.
“Every worker shall be entitled to fourteen days casual leave with wages in every calendar year, which shall lapse after the end of the calendar year. Every worker who has worked for a period of two hundred and forty days or more in a shop or establishment during a calendar year shall be allowed, during the subsequent calendar year, leave with wages for a number of days calculated at the rate of one day for every twenty days of work performed by him during the previous calendar year. Every worker shall be permitted to accumulate earned leave up to a maximum of thirty days,” it states.
“If the employer refuses to sanction the leave due when applied fifteen days in advance, then the worker shall have a right to encash the leave in excess of thirty days,” it further states.
“A worker shall be entitled to eight paid festival holidays in a calendar year, namely, the Independence Day, Republic Day and Gandhi Jayanti and five such other festival holidays as may be agreed to between the employer and the workers, before the commencement of the Calendar year,” the bill states.
The Bill proposes to make it mandatory that in every shop or establishment wherein thirty or more woman workers or fifty or more workers are ordinarily employed, there shall be provided and maintained a suitable rest room for workers and a room or rooms as a crèche for the use of children of such woman workers.
