Consider the following statements: 1) The Factories Act, 1881 was passed with a view to fix the wages of industrial workers and to allow the workers to form trade unions. 2) N.M. Lokhande was a pioneer in organising the labour movement in British India. [2017]

Consider the following statements:

The Factories Act, 1881 was passed with a view to fix the wages of industrial workers and to allow the workers to form trade unions.
N.M. Lokhande was a pioneer in organising the labour movement in British India.

In India, the first Indian Factory Act was passed in 1881, which was later amended in 1891.
Indian Factories Act of 1881:
The Act dealt primarily with the problem of child labour. It also provided a few measures for the health and safety of the workers. It laid down that:
- Children below seven would not work in factories.
- Children between 7 and 12 would not work for more than nine hours a day.
- Children would get four holidays in a month.

The Act also provided for the proper fencing off of dangerous machinery.
This law applied only to those factories that employed 100 or more workers.
Factories Act, 1881, was not to establish wage standards for industrial workers or to facilitate the formation of trade unions.

Indian Factories Act of 1891: Working hours for women were fixed at eleven per day.
- The employment of children below nine years of age was prohibited.
- Daily work hours for children between the ages of 9 to 14 years were reduced to seven.
- A weekly holiday was given to all workers
- These laws applied only to children and women and not to the adult male labourers who formed the bulk of the workforce, and, even in their cases, the protection was not comprehensive.
- Neither of the two Acts applied to British-owned tea and coffee plantations.
- The Factory Act of 1911 restricted the working hours of adult males to 12 hours on any one working day. The amended Factory Act of 1922 further reduced the working time to 11 hours.

Along with the British cotton textile industry, S. S. Bengalee and N.M. Lokhanday played an important role in pressurising the government to pass bills for the improvement of the condition of workers.
- N.M. Lokhanday published an Anglo-Marathi weekly, Dinbandhu, in 1880.
- He also formed the Bombay Millhands’ Association in 1890. It was the first labour organisation in India. Though not a trade union, this association demanded a reduction in working hours, a weekly holiday, and compensation for injuries suffered by the workers during work at the factories.
- In 1878, S. S. Bengalee tried unsuccessfully to introduce a Bill in the Bombay Legislative Council to limit the working hours for labour.