NEW DELHI: Positioning itself against the labour reforms being pushed by the Narendra Modi government, Congress on Thursday said it was against allowing women to work in factories at night because of security concerns.The Factories Amendment Bill tabled in Lok Sabha on Thursday seeks to relax the earlier bar on employing women in factories for night shifts, that is, between 7pm and 6am.“I feel with the type of atmosphere we have in our country at present, the number of rape cases we have and steady increase in atrocities, sexual harassment, assault against women, I don’t think it is very advisable to have night shifts for women in factories,” AICC spokeswoman Shobha Oza said, adding that factories have 12 hours during the day to employ women.Oza, who heads the Congress’s women’s wing and also doubles as the party’s spokeswoman, was speaking at the official party briefing.Congress spokeswoman Shobha Oza.The statement comes as a surprise given that it puts at risk Congress’s credentials as the original reformer while appearing to shrink the working space for women. It also places Congress closer to the Left whose workers’ unions have come out against the lifting of night-shift ban on women in factories.While security is a concern for women workers, industry believes it can be addressed through several measures, such as those taken for the BPO sector.The resistance in Congress contrasts with the government’s push on this particular aspect of Factories Act. The policymakers argue that the idea behind relaxing the night shift bar on women is aimed at boosting the workforce and to help niche manufacturing and businesses for which women are best suited. Also, export houses have to work to a global time-cycle and timings are irrelevant.The Congress view is set to raise concerns in the government should it need the support of the principal opposition party in the Rajya Sabha, where the BJP coalition is short of numbers, as evident in the crisis over the insurance reforms bill.Women working at a textiles factory in Rajasthan's Ranthambore.Oza said the BPO sector could not be compared with factories. Factories had a lot of ground to cover in terms of working conditions and parity in salaries. In BPOs, women were also given transport for travelling to the workplace and back, she said.“We are not opposed to BPOs but factories … you understand, the labourers. So what type of transport mode would they be able to use? Most of the labour commute by public vehicles, they go by bus or walk. For safety reasons, we feel that women should be given day duties,” she said.However, despite the views aired by the AICC spokesperson, a senior leader and former labour minister said the party would debate the issue threadbare to distill the stance it has to take on this facet of labour reform. “The main issue is women’s security, we have to think how it squares up with the changes in the bill seeking to relax the bar on night shifts,” he said.Oza told TOI that as chief of Mahila Congress, she would pressure the party in the discussions to be held. “We have women working in BPOs, nurses work at night, but at the same time, women cannot be kept in police stations after sunset and a TDP MP just said that women should dress appropriately to avoid harassment. We have to keep everything in mind,” she said.While women’s safety is a major area of concern in urban India today, that can’t become one more reason to put constraints on women by not allowing them to work night shifts. It’s the state’s duty to protect citizens, including women, at any time of the day or night.To argue that it won’t be able to fulfil this duty and hence keep women indoors at night is the wrong approach.A modern, globalized economy has many jobs that require people to work at odd hours. Prohibiting night shifts for women effectively means denying them such jobs. It’s not a favour to them but a disservice.