Notice of Change in Conditions of Service

In one line

An employer who wants to change wages, hours, leave, shifts, grades, discipline or the size of the workforce must tell the affected workers first and then wait twenty-one days before doing it.

In exam wording: section 40 of the Industrial Relations Code 2020 provides that no employer who proposes to effect any change in the conditions of service applicable to any worker in respect of any matter specified in the Third Schedule shall effect such change without giving to the workers likely to be affected a notice, in the prescribed manner, of the nature of the change proposed, or within twenty-one days of giving such notice; subject to a proviso dispensing with notice where the change is effected in pursuance of a settlement or award, where the workers are persons to whom the civil service and comparable rules apply, in an emergent situation requiring a change of shift or shift working otherwise than in accordance with standing orders in consultation with the Grievance Redressal Committee, or where the change is effected in accordance with the orders of the appropriate Government.

Why the law has this at all

Almost every industrial dispute in the world starts the same way: the employer changed something.

The wage was recalculated, the shift was moved, the allowance was withdrawn, a new disciplinary rule appeared on the notice board, or a department was reorganised. The workers found out when it happened, usually from the pay slip, and by then it was a fait accompli. The union's only response was to stop work, because there was nothing to negotiate about a change already made.

Chapter V answers that by inserting a pause. It does not stop the employer from making the change. It requires him to say what he is going to do, and then to wait.

Twenty-one days is the whole of the protection, and it is worth more than it looks. In three weeks the workers can consult, the union can ask for a meeting, the Grievance Redressal Committee can be used, a conciliation officer can be approached, and the change can be modified before anybody has to strike about it. If the employer will not move, the workers at least know in advance and can raise a dispute about a proposal rather than about an accomplished fact.

And notice how the Chapter sits between the two others. Chapter IV, standing orders, fixes conditions of service in a certified document. Chapter V governs changing them. Chapters VI and VII deal with the dispute if the change is resisted.

Some words this chapter uses

Conditions of service are the terms on which a person is employed: what he is paid, when he works, what leave he gets, what rules he is subject to.