How legislations like Haryana’s Contract Employment Security Act are altering the landscape of employment laws
The recently notified Haryana Contractual Employment (Security of Service) Act, 2024 secures contract employment of thousands of contract, ad-hoc and outsourced employees in state government bodies. But can it catch up to the changing nature of the employment landscape?
Rohit Mani Tiwari
Published on: 18 August 2025, 02:59 pm
A PARADOXICAL SITUATION HAS RECENTLY EMERGED in the Indian employment landscape. On one hand, there are traditional bastions of ‘secured employment’ like Tata Consultancy Services (‘TCS’), which recently retrenched around 12,000 employees and halted the on-boarding of over 600 graduate trainees (‘GETs’) due to ‘skill-mismatch’ with AI advances (NITES, a trade union of IT workers also approached labor authorities to protect these retrenchments). On the other hand, in the government sector, the Haryana government recently notified The Haryana Contractual Employment (Security of Service) Act, 2024, to secure contract employment of thousands of contract/ad-hoc/outsource employees of up to 60 years of age under state government organisations.
On both sides of the employment spectrum, what is at stake is youth employment and its future. But perhaps, an equally important question to mull over is how technological disruptions and global transitions transform the space of contractual employment.
Today we are living in an age where the employment landscape is fast shifting due to continuous pressure to ‘learn, unlearn and then re-learn’ owing to the intensive skill driven nature of the employment world. In such a context, would legislations like the 2024 Act, be able to respond to the current requirements of the employment landscape?
Such ‘Security of Employment’ labour legislations are laudable in the absolute spirit of welfare-ism and social justice to protect all forms of precarious employment. Recent trends of short term contractual employment must be viewed as modern techniques to circumvent fairness under the labour laws and ensure performance at minimum wages. The Haryana government must be congratulated for this ground breaking initiative to ensure security of tenure and surety of benefits to thousands of youths employed under it on contract, ad-hoc or outsource basis.
Such ‘Security of Employment’ labour legislations are laudable in the absolute spirit of welfare-ism and social justice to protect all forms of precarious employment.
However, there exist several substantive and procedural questions that are bound to arise during administration of this law and may have wider implications for our employment landscape and the future of youth employment. I shall strive to outline them briefly to provide better policy feedback and appropriate appreciation of this law with other pari materia labour legislations.
In essence, the 2024 Act provide for security of employment or ‘secured employment till ordinary age of superannuation i.e 60 years, surety of regular benefits i.e periodical salary hike’ to all ‘secured’ employees who are at par with entry level pay in regular government service along with preferential hike. There are certain pre-requisites like completion of at least five years of service by August 15, 2024, and receipt of 240 working days wages for each completed year by the beneficiary. It will apply to all departments, boards, corporations or authority etc under the Haryana government. The Act has not yet provided for disciplinary procedures and nature for such ‘secured contractual employees’ but in due time it shall be provided. Till now, the object of the Act is ‘to provide security of service to contractual employees’. Now there arise certain inconsistencies and incongruences that require urgent attention.
