Author: Dr. Komal

Abstract
Quite a lot of Indian corporations are significantly reliant on a temporary or outsourced workforce. Moreover the corporations with manpower and staffing services are some of India’s largest private employers, in delivering or deploying contract labourers to its customers, whohave factories and commercial businesses. Labourers engaged in or in combination with the work of an enterprise “by or via a service provider, with or without the knowledge of the main employer” are referred to as temporary or outsourced workers. When the temporary or outsourced workers (Regulation and Eradication legislation) of India (CLRA) was enacted in 1970, it was intended “to govern the employment of temporary or outsourced workers in particular businesses and to extend for its abolition in specific
circumstances.” In both the organised and unorganised sectors, India has seen a huge increase in the number of contract labourers. As per the current data from the Annual Survey of Industries (ASI), the deployment of contract labourers engaged by a third-party service provider has increased in the organised industrial sector. Given India’s labour-intensive workforce, the share of contract labourers in total employment climbed dramatically from 15.5 percent in 2000-01 to 27.9 percent in 2015-16. In the recent years, staffing agencies have reported a considerable increase in recruiting from IT organisations working in banking and financial services, among other industries. Thousands of contract labourers engaged by contractors working at Wistron Infocomm Manufacturing (India), a Taipei-based company that builds iPhones for Apple, went on strike in December 2020 for non-payment of salary and extra compensation. Moreover as perthe reports, the corporation have employed roughly 15,000 people, and around 1,400 on the payroll and the remainder working as temporary or outsourced workers through staffing agencies. This study adopts a doctrinal research methodology, which is a traditional legal research approach focused on analyzing
existing legal doctrines, statutes, and judicial precedents without empirical data collection. It involves a systematic examination of primary sources such as the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970 (CLRA), related amendments, and case laws from Indian courts, including Supreme Court judgments on labor rights. Secondary sources like scholarly articles, government reports (e.g., Annual Survey of Industries), and labor policy analyses are reviewed to identify gaps in enforcement and abolition provisions. The research employs a qualitative, desk-based method, critically evaluating legal texts through interpretation, comparison, and synthesis to propose reforms addressing exploitation of contract laborers. This non-empirical framework ensures a comprehensive theoretical
exploration of labor practices, drawing on historical and contemporary legal contexts in India. The proposed theoretical research studies addressed the issues raised due to labour practices and addressed the challenges faced by the contract labourers in India.

Published in: February 2026 (Volume-8, Number-1)

Keyword: Contract | Compensation | Employment | Labour | Outsourced workers

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