'Lock-out': Concept, Legality and Justification

In one line

A lock-out is the employer's answer to a strike: he temporarily closes the workplace, or suspends work, or refuses to go on employing his workers, in order to force them to accept his terms, and he must give the same sixty days' notice they must.

In exam wording: section 2(u) of the Industrial Relations Code 2020 defines a lock-out as the temporary closing of a place of employment, or the suspension of work, or the refusal by an employer to continue to employ any number of persons employed by him; and section 62(2) prohibits an employer of an industrial establishment from locking out any of his workers without giving them notice of lock-out within sixty days before locking out, within fourteen days of giving such notice, before the expiry of the date specified in the notice, during the pendency of conciliation proceedings and seven days after their conclusion, during proceedings before a Tribunal or National Industrial Tribunal and sixty days after, during notified arbitration proceedings and sixty days after, or during the operation of a settlement or award in respect of matters covered by it.

Why the law has this at all

A strike and a lock-out are the same weapon pointed in opposite directions.

The workers' weapon is withdrawing labour. The employer's weapon is withdrawing work. He shuts the gate, stops the machines, or tells a section of the workforce that there is nothing for them until they accept what he is offering. In each case the wages stop and the pressure is on the people who cannot afford to wait.

So the law treats the two symmetrically, and that symmetry is the first thing to say in any answer. Section 62(1) governs strikes and section 62(2) governs lock-outs in the same words, with the same periods. Section 63 makes both illegal on the same grounds. Section 64 forbids funding either. The Code does not favour one side over the other in this Chapter.

But a lock-out has a problem a strike does not have, and it is the reason this chapter exists as a separate chapter. A strike is unmistakable: the workers have stopped, and everybody knows why. A lock-out is not. When the gate is shut and the machines are cold, the employer may say any of three things, and each has a completely different legal consequence:

• "I have locked out the workers to make them accept my terms." That is section 2(u), and section 62(2) governs it.
• "I have laid off the workers because the raw material has not arrived." That is section 2(t), and Chapter IX gives them compensation.
• "I have closed the place permanently." That is section 2(h), and sections 74 and 75 govern it.