Companies in India will now require written consent from the employees before making them work overtime, reported Business Standard. As per a proposal in the Code on Occupational Safety Health and Working Conditions, 2019, no worker shall be required to work overtime by the employer without the prior consent of the worker in writing for such work, said the report.

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The bill, proposed by Labour and Employment Minister Santosh Kumar Gangwar in the Lok Sabha, comes at a time when the government has removed a provision from the existing law that specifies the number of overtime hours a worker is allowed to do, added the report.

Instead, the Centre or state governments may prescribe a period of overtime work that an employee can do through a notification allowing various government departments to fix working hours without parliament scrutiny, added the report.

Further, the bill states that an employee will be paid twice his normal wage for the working hours. And further, as per the report, the bill added that the wage will also include basic pay, dearness allowance and retention pay components.

Many in the industry are however unsatisfied with certain parts of the bill. As per the report, the industry has raised demands asking the government to leave the provision on overtime to market forces instead of allowing the authorities to prescribe the time.