Labour rights are an integral part of human rights and internationally recognised labour standards have been increasingly accepted as an important feature in the overall respect for human rights. However, India faces a huge challenge in enforcing and monitoring these standards, particularly in the informal economy.

Frequently, workers do not have the capacity to address human rights abuses and discrimination, especially in the case of migrants, contract workers, workers from marginalized communities and women. Moreover, while there is a long tradition of free trade unions in India, the rate of unionized workers is low, particularly in the huge informal economy, where employers often prevent their workers from joining unions. In addition, considerable discrimination remains among the lower social castes, who are often employed in the most exploitative jobs.

The status of workers has been undergoing a fast change from permanent or regular workers to contract or casual workers who are even denied existing legal minimum wages and the most basic human living conditions. These workers are engaged in precarious work exposing them to unsafe working conditions without providing them minimum health and safety measures at work. The percentage of female workers as contract workers is very high in sectors like textiles, readymade garments, electronics, construction, power looms. The existing legal support through labour laws does not provide any immediate and appropriate relief to contract workers. Most of them are migrant workers who live in fear of losing their job in the event of organising in trade unions.

The overall objective towards which the current project contributes is to enhance the awareness and empowerment of Indian workers with regard to the defense and promotion of their fundamental rights at work. Project activities organized under different headings for that purpose: research; capacity building and advisory services. Action oriented research will focus, among other issues, on the conditions and rights of vulnerable groups of workers; on best practice in enterprises as well as on the impact and need for change in labour legislation at various levels. Capacity building and training programmes will primarily aim to better equip labour rights activists/advisors for their tasks and to train the relevant stakeholders at enterprise level in monitoring and assessing company performance in the promotion of labour standards, decent work and corporate social responsibility in general. Special Workers' Service Centers will be created - and existing ones strengthened - in order to provide information and advisory services, professional guidance and access to basic and emergency social assistance to the contract labourers.

The findings and results of this project will be of considerable interest to India's partners (political, business and civil society) in the EU as well, in view of the relevance of human and labour rights issues in the context of the further strengthening of the relations and cooperation between the 2 parties. EIAS will therefore also organize some of the project activities in Brussels in order to highlight selected project outcomes in the light of EU-India relations. Moreover, building on the strong link between this project's contents and the general objective of promoting Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in India as a tool to enhance the role of enterprises in the strengthening of human rights, labour standards and local communities overall, a new action programme is currently being prepared on the subject of CSR cooperation between the business communities and civil societies from the EU and India (as well as from other Asian countries).