The Industrial Tribunal and the National Industrial Tribunal

In one line

The Code has one adjudicating forum, an Industrial Tribunal of two members, a judge and an administrator, with five kinds of case reserved to the two of them sitting together and everything else decided by one member alone; and above it, for disputes of national importance, a National Industrial Tribunal.

In exam wording: section 44 of the Industrial Relations Code 2020 empowers the appropriate Government by notification to constitute one or more Industrial Tribunals for the adjudication of industrial disputes, each consisting of two members appointed by the appropriate Government, one a Judicial Member and the other an Administrative Member, a bench consisting either of both or of a single Judicial Member or a single Administrative Member, with the two-member bench entertaining and deciding only cases relating to the application and interpretation of standing orders, discharge or dismissal of workmen including reinstatement or relief, the illegality or otherwise of a strike or lock-out, retrenchment of workmen and closure of establishment, and Trade Union disputes; and section 46 empowers the Central Government to constitute one or more National Industrial Tribunals for the adjudication of industrial disputes which in its opinion involve questions of national importance or are of such a nature that industrial establishments in more than one State are likely to be interested in or affected by them.

Why the law has this at all

Conciliation persuades and arbitration decides by consent. When neither works, somebody has to decide anyway, and that is adjudication.

The question is what kind of body should do it, and the Code's answer is a deliberate departure from seventy years of practice.

Under the repealed Industrial Disputes Act 1947 there were two forums and a schedule apiece. A Labour Court dealt with the matters in its Second Schedule, which were broadly the individual and disciplinary questions: the propriety of a dismissal, the legality of a strike, the application of standing orders. An Industrial Tribunal dealt with the matters in the Third Schedule, which were broadly the collective and economic questions: wages, bonus, hours, rationalisation. Each was presided over by a single person, and which forum a dispute went to depended on which schedule it fell in.

Two problems followed and both were well known. Disputes did not respect the schedules, so the same quarrel could raise a Second Schedule question and a Third Schedule question and had to be split or misclassified. And a single presiding officer, always a judicial person, decided economic questions about wage structures and rationalisation on which a judge has no special competence.

The Code answers both by combining rather than dividing. One Tribunal, with two members of different kinds. A Judicial Member, who brings the legal training that dismissal and standing-orders cases need. An Administrative Member, who brings the experience of administration that wage and rationalisation cases need. And a rule, section 44(7), that reserves the difficult and contentious classes of case to the two of them sitting together, leaving the rest to one member alone so that the forum is not slowed to the pace of its heaviest work.