labour minister bandaru dattatreya has begun consultations on amending labour laws a longpending demand of the industry in an interview to toi the minister however makes it clear that he is not going to rush ahead with the amendments and will wait for consensus to emerge excerpts q what are the next set of amendments that you are planning a we will take up the amendments to the factories act for which the standing committee report has been received we have held tripartite consultations and we will now move ahead based on the suggestions from the unions they want labour rights to be protected and i have assured them that working conditions and safety and social security will not be compromised at the same time we need to increase the ease of doing business and therefore we are seeking simplification of rules q trade unions have opposed the amendments proposed by you and have threatened to go on strike on may 26 what are you doing about it a i met them on may 15 we are working to address some of their concerns which relate to unorganized sector social security minimum wages contract labour price rise and others their main demand is minimum wage of rs 15000 a month but that is for state governments to decide i have also taken up the issue with the pm and he has set up an informal group headed by me with jayant sinha minister of state for finance dharmendra pradhan oil piyush goyal power and jitendra singh mos in pmo to hold consultations with the unions q you have proposed that you need minimum 100 applicants to form a trade union which the unions are opposing a the recommendations of second national labour commission had proposed codification so it suggested codes for wages industrial relations social security and safety and working conditions it had recommended rationalisation of laws under these codes we have issued drafts just as proposals and we have also held tripartite talks but i am not in a hurry although we are taking their opinion we want to have a very threadbare discussion on that the proposals are such that they will benefit both employers and employees q how do you plan to move ahead with the codes will you hold consultations on all four before you go to parliament with the bills a we have held consultations on two wages and industrial relations but unions need to be consulted to evolve a consensus there is no question of bulldozing our way being a worker i understand the sentiments of workers q but the government has pushed through a lot of legislation so why go slow on labour a everything is on the agenda but we need to evolve a consensus for which we need tripartite meetings we are giving the process a lot of time q what about inspections a we have actually increased it to around 58000 since shram suvidha portal was launched in october