The fact that the mainstream news media favour business over labour, especially in situations of conflict, is a well-established global phenomenon. The news media’s coverage of labour issues systematically foregrounds elite interests and ignores or misrepresents working-class concerns.
Business interests are framed such that they seem aligned with “national interest” while labour actions are portrayed as disruptive.
For the same reason, impacts to businesses and consumers are covered extensively, while workers’ grievances are marginalised. In terms of representation, the mainstream media heavily rely on the ideas and opinions of business representatives, economists, and government officials while displacing working-class voices.
Labour dynamics are most usually presented as discrete events rather than part of systemic patterns. Structural problems, like health, housing, and education, are attributed to personal failures or responsibilities.
Ordinary citizens have come to see this as natural because decades of neoliberal economic policies and their consequences have been consistently presented as inevitable rather than as political choices.
But ultimately, these mechanisms serve elite interests by normalising exploitation, discouraging collective action and maintaining the economic status quo.
This A-Z list of issues at the intersection of labour and media has been put together on the occasion of International Labour Day to highlight what is at stake in the activity we all spend a lot of time doing: hard work.
Accidents
The news media routinely frame workplace injuries as isolated incidents rather than systemic outcomes of production pressures and inadequate safety measures. The CRUSHED 2024 report documents thousands of crush injuries in automotive supply chains, yet mainstream coverage rarely connects these incidents to broader patterns of cost-cutting or corporate negligence.
Beat reporting
Once a cornerstone of mainstream journalism, labour-focused reporting has virtuallydisappeared from newsrooms, replaced by expanded coverage of business and financial markets. Specialised journalists who built relationships with workers and understood labour history have been replaced with business reporters, primarily accessing management sources.
The coverage of workplace issues typically emerges only during dramatic disputes rather than through ongoing beat reporting that would contextualise conditions between conflicts. The dismantling of labour beats coincided with the media’s increasing dependence on corporate advertising and conglomeration under business houses with direct industry interests.
Casualisation
Replacing permanent jobs with casual or contract work is often celebrated as “flexibility” rather than the erosion of job security and benefits. The informalising of formal sector employment, where established companies increasingly rely on contracts, temporary and casual workers for core operations, represents a significant shift that the news media largely seems comfortable with.
In India, even major manufacturing companies, multinational corporations and public sector enterprises now maintain a minority of permanent employees alongside a majority workforce of precarious workers who may work for years or decades without gaining permanent status.
Downsizing
Typically framed in the news media as “restructuring” or “right-sizing” to mask the human cost of layoffs. Business reporting routinely valourises these decisions with stock market reactions, executive interviews, and discussions about “operational efficiency” while minimising or omitting the perspectives of the workers affected.
This asymmetric coverage legitimises prioritising shareholder value over worker livelihoods, indicating that the interests of capital supersede human wellbeing in corporate decision-making.
Economic Reform
In India, economic reforms are often considered universally beneficial, without examining differential impacts on capital and labour. The media consistently frame liberalisation, privatisation, and deregulation as objectively necessary actions rather than ideological policy choices that redistribute power and resources.
Such coverage relies heavily on elite sources (such as officials of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, corporate executives and mainstream economists) while marginalising heterodox economic perspectives or labour voices. This creates a manufactured consensus that presents capital-favouring policies as technical necessities rather than contested political decisions with clear winners and losers.
Factories Act
Historic labour protection laws are seldom referenced in contemporary media, obscuring hard-won rights. In the Indian context, the Factories Act of 1948, established shortly after Independence as a cornerstone of worker protection, has been systematically undermined through implementation failures and legislative “reforms”. Yet, the news media rarely contextualise these changes within India’s labour history.
Media coverage of factory regulations typically focuses on their alleged impediment to economic growth and foreign investment while minimising their critical role in preventing exploitation and ensuring worker safety. The gradual dilution of the Factories Act through amendments and state-level modifications is presented as necessary “modernisation” rather than the erosion of fundamental protections.
Gig Economy
Celebrated as innovation and freedom while downplaying precarity, lack of benefits, and exploitation. News media narratives employ technological determinism that presents platform-based labour as inevitable progress rather than deliberate business models designed to circumvent labour protections.
Coverage highlights exceptional success stories and “flexibility” while normalising the systematic transfer of business risk onto individual workers. This framing obscures how these arrangements undermine century-old labour standards and collective bargaining rights, effectively naturalising a return to piece-rate work under the guise of technological innovation.
Health
Media coverage systematically ignores how worker health is linked to broader economic outcomes and productivity. Workers without adequate nutrition, rest, healthcare or decent living conditions cannot sustain the physical and mental capacity required for high productivity.
The media’s compartmentalisation of worker health as a separate “social” challenge rather than an economic prerequisite serves elite interests by obscuring how exploitative labour practices ultimately undermine national economic development.
By failing to connect health outcomes to economic performance, mainstream outlets effectively naturalise a contradictory development model that simultaneously depends on worker productivity while undermining the physical and social conditions necessary to sustain it.
This ideological framework prevents recognition of how social reproduction of labour – the processes through which workers maintain their bodies and raise the next generation of workers – forms an essential but unaccounted economic foundation.
Industrial Relations
The historical concept of Industrial Relations acknowledged the inherent power differential between capital and labour, recognising that formalised structures (collective bargaining, grievance procedures, labour laws and more) were necessary to create a sustainable balance between various interests.
By contrast, the Human Resources framework implicitly denies this structural dimension, recasting workplace relations as individualised transactions between employers and employees whose interests are presumed to be naturally aligned. Media coverage of workplace innovations focuses on management techniques rather than power-sharing mechanisms, presenting labour peace as a product of enlightened management rather than institutional balance.
Journalist
In mainstream media discourse, journalists are paradoxically framed as elite professionals while their labour conditions and rights remain largely invisible. This contradiction became particularly evident in the news media’s treatment of repealing the Working Journalists and Other Newspaper Employees (Conditions of Service) and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1955.
The Act was landmark legislation that recognised journalism’s public service function by establishing statutory working conditions, regulated hours, leave policies, and most importantly, wage board mechanisms that ensured fair compensation across the industry. These protections acknowledged that journalism’s democratic function required insulation from pure market forces to prevent publisher interests from compromising journalistic independence.
Keynesian economics
Media coverage consistently portrays Keynesian policies promoting full employment and labour protections as outdated government overreach. Reporting in this regard usually frames market interventions as inherently inefficient while presenting austerity measures, which are harmful to the working class, as responsible governance. Business sources dominate these discussions, with minimal representation from economists supporting demand-side approaches. This framing serves capital interests by advocating reduced public spending on social programmes while dismissing economic models that prioritise employment security and wage growth over investor returns.
Labour participation
News media coverage of India’s female labour participation typically attributes this crisis to cultural factors while minimising structural exclusions and workplace hostilities. Reporting presents formal frameworks like POSH (Prevention of Sexual Harassment) and DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) as comprehensive solutions while rarely investigating their systematic implementation failures and enforcement gaps.
Coverage celebrates corporate policy adoption as progress while overlooking how these mechanisms frequently serve as performative compliance rather than substantive protection. Media narratives frame women’s workforce departures as a personal choice rather than examining how hostile environments, inadequate redressal systems, and wage disparities effectively push women out.
Similar patterns emerge in the coverage of caste discrimination and queer exclusion, where formal protections receive laudatory coverage despite minimal accountability mechanisms.
Minimum wage
Frequently portrayed as a ceiling rather than a floor for compensation, with little examination of its adequacy. Mainstream economic reporting routinely presents minimum wage increases as potential threats to economic growth, employment levels, and business viability while giving minimal attention to their adequacy for human survival and dignity. This framing starkly contrasts the concept of a living wage – compensation sufficient for workers to meet basic needs, including food, shelter, healthcare, education and modest savings.
The news media rarely examine the substantial gap between legally mandated minimum wages and actual living wages in most Indian contexts.
Neoliberalism
The news media rarely use this term to describe the dominant economic framework despite its outsized impact on labour policy. When discussed, reporting typically presents market deregulation, privatisation, and union weakening as inevitable modernisation rather than deliberate policy choices.
This framing serves capital interests by naturalising political decisions that shift power from workers to employers, presenting economic structures as determined by markets rather than shaped through contested policy processes that consistently favour business.
Overtime
News media coverage routinely amplifies industry calls for extended workweeks while minimising evidence of diminishing returns beyond 40 hours. Business leaders are quoted advocating longer hours as a “competitive necessity” despite productivity research contradicting these claims. Coverage rarely examines how overtime functions as a wage suppression strategy by extracting additional labour without a proportional increase in the wage bill.
The media’s uncritical transmission of industry talking points about “work ethic” and “dedication” serves capital’s interests directly. When covering these debates, mainstream outlets consistently fail to ask why productivity gains have primarily benefited shareholders rather than translating into tangible gains for the workers, consumers and society more broadly.
Public relations
Media coverage routinely fails to acknowledge how the PR industry shapes news content. According to several estimates, PR sector professionals now dramatically outnumber journalists by ratios ranging from 4:1 to 6:1, pointing towards a structural transformation of the information landscape.
PR professionals systematically influence reporting through controlling access to executives and information; providing pre-packaged content that resource-starved newsrooms increasingly rely upon; offering “exclusives” and embargoed releases that guarantee coverage; and cultivating journalists through junkets, events and personalised relationship management. These practices create subtle but powerful dependencies that media organisations rarely disclose to audiences.
Business and technology reporting are particularly dependent on managed access, creating implicit incentives against critical coverage that might jeopardise future access to sources and information. This structural reality directly impacts labour coverage, as corporate PR departments maintain significant resources to shape narratives around workplace issues that labour typically lacks.
Quiet quitting
A term popularised in 2022 media coverage describing workers who perform only their explicitly contracted duties without additional effort. Mainstream media often frames quiet quitting as laziness or worker entitlement rather than a response to wage stagnation, increased workloads, and deteriorating working conditions.
Coverage typically emphasises employer perspectives, portraying the phenomenon as a productivity and work ethic crisis rather than examining the underlying systemic causes. This framing shifts responsibility from structural economic issues onto individual workers, reinforcing business interests by stigmatising those who resist unpaid additional labour.
Remote work
News media representation of remote work typically emphasises freedom and flexibility while obscuring new forms of digital surveillance and professional-personal boundary erosion. Coverage celebrates location independence without examining how monitoring software, productivity trackers, and always-on communication protocols create unprecedented worker visibility.
Reporting also rarely questions how remote arrangements directly transfer significant business costs – office space, equipment, utilities and infrastructure – to employees without corresponding compensation increases. The framing presents these arrangements as mutually beneficial while minimising how technologies enable work expansion into previously protected personal time.
Strike
Perhaps the most reframed labour term, portrayed as a disruptive inconvenience rather than a fundamental democratic right and necessary tool for collective bargaining. Media coverage systematically emphasises impacts on businesses or consumers while minimising conditions that led workers to strike.
This asymmetric framing is reinforced through source selection (management quotes appear earlier and more prominently than worker perspectives) and visual choices (focusing on affected consumers rather than striking workers).
Coverage often dehistoricises strikes by failing to contextualise them within broader labour struggles or company profit histories, portraying them as unreasonable disruptions rather than last-resort responses to power imbalances. While strikes receive negative coverage, employer lockouts often receive minimal attention or are presented as reasonable business decisions.
When employers deny workers access to their workplace, effectively weaponising work stoppage from the position of power, coverage typically employs neutral language like “facility closure” or “operations suspension” rather than identifying it as a deliberate anti-labour tactic.
Transition
The concept of “just transition”, developed by labour movements to ensure workers are not sacrificed during environmental shifts, receives minimal attention compared to corporate adaptation narratives. Reporting often presents job losses in polluting industries as inevitable collateral damage rather than policy failures.
Coverage rarely examines how workers disproportionately bear transition costs while transition benefits primarily flow to capital through subsidies, tax incentives, and new market creation. When labour advances comprehensive just transition frameworks that protect livelihoods while enabling environmental progress, the news media typically reduce these proposals to simplistic “jobs versus environment” narratives that obscure potential alignment between worker and ecological interests.
Unions
Portrayed as outdated, corrupt or obstacles to progress rather than democratic organisations representing the collective voice of workers. Media coverage employs several ideological mechanisms to delegitimise unions: presenting them as “special interests” rather than democratic representatives; emphasising corruption allegations while minimising achievements; framing their demands as excessive without contextualising them against company profits; and suggesting they are unnecessary in contemporary workplaces.
This systematic delegitimisation serves elite interests by weakening public support for collective bargaining.
In the Indian context, the media frequently focuses on the political affiliations of trade unions rather than their substantive demands, effectively reducing labour issues to partisan politics rather than fundamental economic rights.
Violence
Media coverage systematically misrepresents labour activism by playing up isolated incidents while minimising the routine violence workers face through unsafe conditions, economic insecurity and employer intimidation. News media reporting frames collective action through threatening language of “disruption” and “unrest” that portrays workers as inherently irrational and dangerous.
Coverage also typically deploys law enforcement framing of labour disputes as public safety threats rather than economic conflicts. Mainstream reporting rarely examines how this framing justifies aggressive police intervention in what are fundamentally economic disputes, transforming labour issues into law enforcement matters. This representation serves capital interests by delegitimising worker solidarity through association with disorder and criminality.
Weekend
Media discourse rarely acknowledges that the weekend break was actually hard-won through decades of labour struggle. This basic workplace right is presented as an administrative inevitability rather than the result of organised worker resistance. When reporting on contemporary labour issues, the news media seldom contextualises them within this historical continuum of rights secured through collective action, including the eight-hour workday, minimum wage protections, workplace safety regulations, and child labour prohibitions among many others.
Instead, mainstream coverage presents these standards as natural market evolutions or benevolent corporate concessions. This framing serves capital interests by disconnecting current workplace conditions from their contested history, portraying labour protections as settled rather than continuously defended territories.
Xenophobia
The media coverage frequently enables xenophobic labour narratives by uncritically reporting claims that immigrant workers are aliens and infiltrators or do not integrate with or are a risk to host cultures. These framings serve capital interests by dividing the working class along regional/ethnic lines, weakening collective bargaining power.
When reporting on labour shortages, mainstream outlets often amplify business complaints about worker availability without examining wage offerings or working conditions.
Youth labour
Media portrayal of youth employment typically frames unpaid internships and sub-minimum training wages as valuable “experience” regardless of the exploitation involved. Reporting frames entry-level positions as stepping stones while minimising how age-tiered compensation often represents profit extraction rather than training investment.
This framing serves business interests by justifying unequal treatment while suggesting workplace immiseration reflects character-building rather than systematically devaluing young workers.
Zero-sum framing
Media typically present labour gains as necessarily coming at the expense of business viability or consumer prices, reinforcing the notion that worker interests fundamentally oppose economic health. This framing serves capital by portraying modest labour demands as economically destructive while rarely questioning excessive profit margins or ever-increasing executive compensation.
However, it cannot be emphasised enough that strong and sustainable businesses and economies need serious investment in human potential. A healthy, secure, and motivated workforce is the key to the country’s overall development.
The systematic marginalisation of labour perspectives by the mainstream media has significantly distorted public understanding of the nation’s economic and social development priorities. By privileging corporate framing, news media coverage has normalised policies that benefit capital while obscuring their human costs to ordinary citizens whose labour built this country.
The celebration of GDP growth without examination of its distribution leaves Indians unable to reconcile statistical prosperity with lived economic precarity in their communities.
This deliberate narrowing of economic discourse creates a citizenry struggling to evaluate whether development truly serves the nation’s collective interest or merely enriches a privileged few. Without substantive labour perspectives, we cannot fully participate in shaping an inclusive national development that honours the contributions of all who work hard to build our country.
Faiz Ullah researches and writes on labour, media, and digital cultures.
