'Strike': Concept, Legality and Justification

In one line

A strike is a stoppage of work by workers acting together, or a concerted refusal to work, and it now includes mass casual leave by half the workforce; it is illegal if it breaks the notice and waiting rules in section 62; and whether it is justified is a separate question about the merits.

In exam wording: section 2(zk) of the Industrial Relations Code 2020 defines a strike as a cessation of work by a body of persons employed in any industry acting in combination, or a concerted refusal, or a refusal under a common understanding, of any number of persons who are or have been so employed to continue to work or to accept employment, and includes the concerted casual leave on a given day by fifty per cent. or more workers employed in an industry; section 62 prohibits a strike in breach of contract without sixty days' notice, within fourteen days of the notice, before the date specified in it, during conciliation proceedings and seven days after, 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 on matters covered by it; and section 63 makes a strike illegal if commenced or declared in contravention of section 62 or continued in contravention of an order under section 42(7).

Why the law has this at all

Module I explained why workers combine: individually a worker has nothing the employer needs, and collectively they have the only thing he needs. The strike is that arithmetic being used. It is the ultimate sanction, and everything else in the subject, recognition, conciliation, adjudication, exists to make it unnecessary.

But a strike is also a public event with third parties in it. A stoppage at a bus depot strands people who are not party to the dispute. A stoppage at a hospital is worse. And a stoppage that begins before anybody has tried to settle the dispute wastes the machinery Parliament built.

So the law does not prohibit strikes and does not protect them either. It regulates their timing. Section 62 does not ask whether the demand is good. It asks whether notice was given, whether the waiting periods were observed, and whether any settlement machinery was running at the time. A strike that clears those hurdles is lawful however unreasonable the demand; a strike that does not is illegal however just the grievance.

And there is no constitutional right to strike. In All India Bank Employees' Association v. National Industrial Tribunal, AIR 1962 SC 171, the Supreme Court held that the right guaranteed by article 19(1)(c) extends only to the formation of an association or union and carries no concomitant right that it shall achieve its objects; the union's activities, and the steps it may take, are subject to such laws as may be framed and are not tested against article 19(4). That case is worked in [Why Workers Combined: The Historical Reasons]; its consequence here is that the right to strike, so far as it exists at all, is whatever section 62 leaves.