Standing Orders: What They Are and Who Must Have Them

In one line

Standing orders are the written, officially certified rules of an establishment about who is employed on what terms, what counts as misconduct and what happens if you break them, and every industrial establishment with three hundred or more workers must have them.

In exam wording: section 2(zj) of the Industrial Relations Code 2020 defines "standing orders" as orders relating to matters set out in the First Schedule; section 28(1) applies Chapter IV to every industrial establishment wherein three hundred or more workers are employed, or were employed on any day of the preceding twelve months; section 29(1) requires the Central Government to make model standing orders relating to conditions of service and matters incidental thereto or connected therewith; and section 29(2) provides that, notwithstanding sections 30 to 36, from the date the section becomes applicable to an establishment until certified standing orders come into operation under section 33, the model standing orders shall be deemed to be adopted in that establishment.

Why the law has this at all

The best statement of the reason is in the repealed Act's own introduction, and it is worth quoting because it is primary material rather than commentary.

It records that the economic law of demand and supply in the labour market had been assumed to settle a mutually beneficial bargain, and that workers had a binding faith in it; that the working of that law belied their faith; that workers, finding they did not possess adequate bargaining strength to secure fair terms and conditions of service, organised themselves in trade unions and insisted on collective bargaining; and that, recognising the rough deal being given to workers by employers who would not define their conditions of service, and the inevitability of industrial strife in such a situation, the legislature intervened.

That phrase is the whole justification: employers who would not define their conditions of service.

Think about what it means in practice for a worker in a plant of two thousand people. Nobody has told him what his category is, whether he is permanent or temporary, how leave is applied for and who grants it, what his hours are, on what notice he may be dismissed, or what counts as misconduct. Each of those is decided, case by case, by whoever is supervising him that day. He cannot plan, he cannot complain of unfairness because there is no standard to measure against, and he cannot know in advance that what he is about to do will cost him his job.

The answer is not to fix the terms by statute. Different industries need different rules, and Parliament cannot write a leave policy for every factory. The answer is to make the employer write his rules down, have them checked by a public officer for fairness, and then hold him to them. That is what Chapter IV does.