Bi-partite Forums: Works Committee and Grievance Redressal Committee

In one line

Before a dispute leaves the factory it is supposed to be dealt with inside it: a Works Committee keeps the general relationship in repair, and a Grievance Redressal Committee decides one worker's complaint.

In exam wording: section 3 of the Industrial Relations Code 2020 empowers the appropriate Government, by general or special order, to require the employer of an industrial establishment in which one hundred or more workers are employed, or were employed on any day in the preceding twelve months, to constitute a Works Committee of representatives of the employer and the workers, the workers' representatives being not fewer than the employer's and chosen from among the workers in consultation with their registered Trade Union, whose duty is to promote measures for securing and preserving amity and good relations and to comment upon matters of common interest; and section 4 requires every industrial establishment employing twenty or more workers to have one or more Grievance Redressal Committees for the resolution of disputes arising out of individual grievances, with equal representation of employer and workers, a chairperson rotating annually, not more than ten members, adequate representation of women workers, an application within one year, proceedings within thirty days, a decision by majority subject to the agreement of more than half of the workers' representatives, and a right to take an unresolved grievance to conciliation within sixty days.

Why the law has this at all

Every dispute-resolution system in the world has the same problem: most disputes should never reach it.

A quarrel about a shift roster, a supervisor's rudeness, an unpaid allowance or a misapplied leave rule is a small thing that becomes a large one if nobody deals with it. Sent to conciliation it takes months; sent to a Tribunal it takes years, by which time the grievance has hardened, other workers have taken sides, and what began as an administrative slip has become an industrial dispute.

So the Code puts two filters inside the establishment, and they are called bi-partite because only two sides are present: the employer and the workers. Nobody from outside, no conciliation officer, no Government.

The two filters catch different things and that is the key to the whole chapter.

The Works Committee is preventive and collective. Its job is not to decide anything. It exists to keep the relationship in repair, so that grievances are noticed before they become disputes.

The Grievance Redressal Committee is remedial and individual. It decides one worker's complaint, on an application, within a time limit, by a vote.

And both of them answer article 43A of the Constitution, which directs the State to take steps to secure the participation of workers in the management of undertakings. Sections 3 and 4 are what that direction looks like once it reaches a statute, as [The ILO's Influence on Indian Labour Legislation] explains.