Labor legislations are important due to following reasons:
Protecting Workers and Securing Justice
Labour legislation regards the individual as a worker, whereas social legislation considers him primarily as a citizen. The principles governing labour legislation are more influenced by the postulates of social justice than general justice.
Workers are the weaker class of industrial society and have suffered long at the hands of employers. Therefore, these sets of legislation go out of the way in protecting workers and securing justice to them.
The influences of ‘discriminative justice’ and ‘distributive justice’ can be clearly seen over them. All the labour legislations are heavily skewed towards labour and they are specifically designed like that.
Alleviates Special Disorders
The labour legislations are the products of the Industrial Revolution and they have come into being to take care of the aberrations created by it.
They are different from common legislations because they come to alleviate special disorders created by specific circumstances. Therefore, they are specific and not general in orientation, philosophy, concept, and even in practice.
Deals with Problems of Labour
Labour legislation seeks to deal with the problems arising out of the occupational status of individuals. Consequently, such problems as hours of work, wages, working conditions, trade unionism, industrial relations, and so on come to be the main subject matters of labour legislation.
Thus regulation of the behavior of the individual or his group is the function of labour legislation as of any other legislation. But under labour legislation, the individual is affected in the capacity of a worker or an employer.
Therefore, persons who are neither employers nor workers are least affected directly by labour legislation.
Meet Specific Objectives
Individuals have different roles to perform and different laws are designed for regulating the different roles. It is the role relation that determines whether a particular legislation falls under the category of labour legislation, social legislation, or general legislation. All these legislations try to meet the specific objectives of their respective target groups that are:
- To provide subsistence,
- To aim at abundance,
- To encourage equality, and
- To maintain security.
Regulates Conditions of Labour
As labour legislations are to regulate the conditions of labour in the industrial milieu, it is required to be adjusted as per the changing requirements of the industry. This has to be done more frequently than the general legislation where changes are not that swift.
Unless labour legislations are subjected to frequent revision and not left to continue as they are, they become obsolete and irrelevant.
The Indian Labour Legislations are the best example. Most of them have become outdated as the required revisions have not been affected and gaps have been created between the expectation of industrial society and the institution of labour legislation.