BLS LLB 5 Years Sem 5 Labour Laws 2025-26 - ATKT Set 2 75/25 Question Paper with Solutions

Section 2(zr): "worker" means any person, except an apprentice as defined in the Apprentices Act, 1961, employed in any industry to do any manual, unskilled, skilled, technical, operational, clerical or supervisory work for hire or reward, whether the terms of employment be express or implied, and includes working journalists as defined in the Working Journalists and other Newspaper Employees (Conditions of Service) and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1955, and sales promotion employees as defined in the Sales Promotion Employees (Conditions of Service) Act, 1976, and, for the purposes of any proceeding under the Code in relation to an industrial dispute, any such person who has been dismissed, discharged or retrenched or otherwise terminated in connection with or as a consequence of that dispute.

It excludes any person subject to the Air Force Act, the Army Act or the Navy Act; employed in the police service or as an officer or employee of a prison; employed mainly in a managerial or administrative capacity; or employed in a supervisory capacity drawing wages exceeding eighteen thousand rupees per month or such higher amount as may be notified.

Section 2(e): "award" means an interim or a final determination of any industrial dispute or of any question relating thereto by the Tribunal or National Industrial Tribunal, and includes an arbitration award made under Section 42.

The Code on Wages, 2019 contains no definition of "minimum wages". What it provides is the obligation and the machinery.

1. The obligation. Section 5: no employer shall pay to any employee wages less than the minimum rate of wages notified by the appropriate Government.
2. Who fixes it. Section 6: the appropriate Government shall fix the minimum rate of wages, for time work or for piece work, and by Section 6(6) shall primarily take into account the skill of workers required under the categories of unskilled, skilled, semi-skilled and highly skilled, or the geographical area, or both, and may in addition take into account the arduousness of the work.

Section 18(1) first prohibits: there shall be no deductions from the wages of the employee, except those as are authorised under this Code. Section 18(2) then lists the permitted purposes. Three of them are:

1. fines imposed on the employee, regulated by Section 19;
2. deductions for his absence from duty, regulated by Section 20; and
3. deductions for damage to or loss of goods expressly entrusted to the employee for custody, or for loss of money for which he is required to account, where the damage or loss is directly attributable to his neglect or default, regulated by Section 21.

Collective bargaining is the process by which an employer or association of employers and one or more representative organisations of workers negotiate the terms and conditions of employment and arrive at an agreement binding both sides for a stated period. The expression was coined by Sidney and Beatrice Webb in Industrial Democracy (1897).

It is bilateral: the parties themselves make the terms, unlike adjudication, where an award is imposed, and conciliation, where a third party only assists.

In Indian law its product is given force by Section 57 of the Industrial Relations Code, 2020, under which a settlement arrived at in the course of conciliation proceedings binds not only the parties but all persons employed in the establishment, while a private settlement binds only the signatories.

Lock-out. Section 2(u) of the Industrial Relations Code, 2020: 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.

Closure. Section 2(h): the permanent closing down of a place of employment or part thereof.

The distinctions.

A third concept, for completeness. A lay-off under Section 2(t) is the employer's failure, refusal or inability to give work on account of shortage of coal, power or raw materials, accumulation of stocks, break-down of machinery, natural calamity or any other connected reason. It is temporary like a lock-out but involuntary, and it attracts compensation at fifty per cent of basic wages and dearness allowance under Section 67. In a Chapter X establishment, Section 78 prohibits lay-off without prior permission except for shortage of power or natural calamity.

3. To discriminate in regard to hire, tenure of employment or any term or condition of employment for the purpose of encouraging or discouraging membership of a union.
4. To discharge or dismiss workers by way of victimisation, in colourable exercise of the employer's rights, by falsely implicating a worker in a criminal case on false or concocted evidence, for patently false reasons, on trumped-up allegations of absence, or in utter disregard of the principles of natural justice.
5. To transfer a worker mala fide from one place to another under the guise of following management policy.
6. To employ workers as badlis, casuals or temporaries and to continue them as such for years, with the object of depriving them of the status and privileges of permanent workers.
7. To recruit workers during a strike which is not an illegal strike, and to abolish work of a regular nature and give it to contractors as a measure of breaking a strike.
8. To refuse to bargain collectively in good faith with the recognised trade unions.
9. To indulge in acts of force or violence, and to fail to implement an award, settlement or agreement.

A. Fixation of the wage period. Section 16: the employer shall fix the wage period for employees, either as daily, weekly, fortnightly or monthly, subject to the condition that no wage period in respect of any employee shall be more than a month.

B. The time limits. Section 17(1): the employer shall pay or cause to be paid wages to employees engaged on:

1. daily basis, at the end of the shift;
2. weekly basis, on the last working day of the week, that is to say, before the weekly holiday;
3. fortnightly basis, before the end of the second day after the end of the fortnight; and
4. monthly basis, before the expiry of the seventh day of the succeeding month.

C. On termination. Section 17(2): where an employee has been removed or dismissed from service, or retrenched, or has resigned from service, or become unemployed due to closure of the establishment, the wages payable to him shall be paid within two working days of his removal, dismissal, retrenchment or resignation.

3. Appeal. Section 49: to the appellate authority, an officer not below the rank of Deputy Chief Labour Commissioner or equivalent, within ninety days.
4. Penalty. Section 54(1)(a): paying less than the amount due is punishable with a fine up to fifty thousand rupees, and on a repeat conviction within five years, with imprisonment up to three months or a fine up to one lakh rupees or both.

2. any activity of the appropriate Government relatable to the sovereign functions of the appropriate Government, including all the activities carried on by the departments of the Central Government dealing with defence research, atomic energy and space;
3. any domestic service; or
4. any other activity as may be notified by the Central Government.

The three ingredients, which are the triple test in statutory form: systematic activity; co-operation between employer and worker; and production, supply or distribution of goods or services to satisfy human wants or wishes, other than merely spiritual or religious wants.

Why it matters. "Industry" is the gateway: without it there is no industrial dispute under Section 2(q), no worker under Section 2(zr), and none of the Code's protections.

In response, the employer, without issuing any prior notice, closed the factory gates and denied entry to all workers from the next day, citing disciplinary concerns.

(a) Define "Lock-out" under the Industrial Relations Code, 2020.

Section 2(u): "lock-out" means 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.

2. The employer gave no notice at all, so the first requirement is breached, and Section 63(1)(i) makes a lock-out commenced or declared in contravention of Section 62 illegal.
3. Section 62(3) dispenses with notice only where a strike is already in existence. The workers here held a demonstration, not a strike: there was no cessation of work in combination, no concerted refusal to work, and no concerted casual leave by fifty per cent or more of the workers within Section 2(zk). So the exception does not apply.
4. Section 63(3), which protects a lock-out declared in consequence of an illegal strike, is likewise unavailable, because there was no strike, illegal or otherwise.
5. The employer must also report. Section 62(6) requires an employer who gives a notice of lock-out to report it within five days to the appropriate Government and the conciliation officer.

The consequences.

1. Penalty. Section 86 makes commencing, continuing or acting in furtherance of an illegal lock-out an offence.

The workers contend that Model Standing Orders should apply automatically.

(a) State the obligations of the employer regarding Standing Orders under the Industrial Relations Code, 2020.

1. The Chapter applies. Section 28(1): Chapter IV applies to every industrial establishment wherein three hundred or more than three hundred workers are employed, or were employed on any day of the preceding twelve months. Orion Logistics employs more than 300, so it is bound.

6. After certification: comply with Section 33 on the date of operation and availability; Section 34, the register; Section 35, modification only after six months except by agreement; and Section 38, completion of disciplinary proceedings ordinarily within ninety days and payment of subsistence allowance at fifty per cent of wages for the first ninety days and seventy-five per cent thereafter where the delay is not attributable to the worker.
7. Above all, comply with the standing orders in force. Regulating service conditions by internal policy inconsistent with the standing orders that govern the establishment is a breach.

(b) Explain the consequences of non-compliance.

1. The workers' contention is correct: the model standing orders already apply. Section 29 provides that the Central Government shall make model standing orders relating to the First Schedule matters, and that until the standing orders as finally certified come into operation, the model standing orders shall be deemed to be adopted in the establishment. Orion Logistics is therefore already governed by them, and has been since the Chapter applied to it.

5. Disputes about application or interpretation of the standing orders in force may be referred under Section 37, and an individual grievance may go to the Grievance Redressal Committee under Section 4, the establishment employing far more than twenty workers.
6. Loss of the benefit of bespoke terms. By not certifying, the employer forfeits the opportunity to have terms suited to its own operations, shift patterns, classification of workers, disciplinary procedure, given statutory force, and is governed instead by a general template drawn for everybody.

Section 14(3): where more than one registered trade union is functioning, the trade union having fifty-one per cent or more workers on the muster roll of that establishment, verified in such manner as may be prescribed, supporting that union, shall be recognised by the employer as the sole negotiating union.

(b) State the criteria for recognition under the Code.

1. One union functioning: Section 14(2) requires recognition of that union as the sole negotiating union.
2. More than one union, and one has fifty-one per cent or more: Section 14(3) requires recognition of that union as the sole negotiating union.
3. More than one union and none has fifty-one per cent: Section 14(4) requires the employer to constitute a negotiating council, consisting of representatives of those registered trade unions which have the support of not less than twenty per cent of the total workers on the muster roll, so verified, with one representative for each twenty per cent and for the remainder after calculating the membership on each twenty per cent.

3. The seats, on the formula of one representative for each twenty per cent and for the remainder: Union A, 48 per cent, gives two full blocks of twenty and a remainder of eight, and so three representatives; Union B, 32 per cent, gives one full block and a remainder of twelve, and so two representatives; Union C, 20 per cent, gives one full block and no remainder, and so one representative. The council has six representatives, of whom A holds three.
4. Agreement requires a majority of the representatives under Section 14(5). With three of six, Union A cannot carry an agreement alone; it must obtain the support of at least one representative of B or C.
5. Unions B and C are therefore right, and their demand for joint participation is what the Code requires.
6. The arrangement lasts three years under Section 14(6), so if Union A can raise its support above fifty-one per cent in the meantime, it may claim sole recognition when the period expires.

Section 17(2): where an employee has been removed or dismissed, retrenched, or has resigned, or has become unemployed due to closure, his wages shall be paid within two working days.

Section 16 requires the employer to fix the wage period as daily, weekly, fortnightly or monthly, and provides that no wage period shall exceed one month.

(b) Whether such delay is legally justified?

No.

1. Delta Metals pays monthly, so the limit is the seventh day of the succeeding month. Payment on the eighteenth is eleven days late and is a plain contravention of Section 17(1)(iv).
2. "Administrative delays in payroll processing" is no defence. Section 17 imposes an absolute obligation on the employer, and the difficulties of its own payroll system are within its own control. The Code recognises no exception for internal inefficiency.

3. Appeal. Section 49: to the appellate authority, an officer not below the rank of Deputy Chief Labour Commissioner or equivalent, within ninety days.
4. Inspector-cum-Facilitator. Section 51: a complaint may be made to him; he may inspect, examine records, and give the employer a written direction with a time for compliance before prosecution in appropriate cases.
5. Penalty. Section 54(1)(a): paying an employee less than the amount due is punishable with a fine up to fifty thousand rupees; on a repeat conviction within five years, with imprisonment up to three months or a fine up to one lakh rupees or both. Section 52 provides that cognizance is taken on a complaint by or under the authority of the appropriate Government or an authorised officer, or by an employee, or by a registered trade union, or by an Inspector-cum-Facilitator, and that no court inferior to a Metropolitan Magistrate or Judicial Magistrate of the first class shall try the offence.
6. Where the establishment is an industrial establishment, persistent delay in payment of wages may also be raised as an industrial dispute under the Industrial Relations Code, 2020, and in Maharashtra it may amount to an unfair labour practice if it is part of a pattern of pressure.

For full marks, cover: what the Industrial Revolution changed; the conditions it produced; the legal position of combinations in England; the repeal of the Combination Acts and the growth of unions; the parallel developments in India; and the connection to modern statute.

A. What the Industrial Revolution changed. Beginning in Britain from about 1760, the Industrial Revolution replaced domestic and craft production with the factory system. Three changes did the work:

1. Power-driven machinery and the factory concentrated production in large units, so that hundreds of people worked together under one roof and under one master.
2. The division of labour de-skilled the work. A craftsman who had made a whole article became a hand tending a machine, and was therefore replaceable.
3. Urbanisation drew displaced agricultural and cottage workers into towns, where they had no land, no craft and no alternative but wage labour.

B. The conditions those changes produced.

C. Why combination followed. In an individual bargain the employer and the workman are formally equal and actually unequal: the employer can wait, the workman cannot. Sidney and Beatrice Webb, in Industrial Democracy (1897), made that the foundation of their account of collective bargaining, which they defined as the method by which workers, acting through their organisation, replace the individual bargain. Combination was the only means by which a de-skilled and replaceable workforce could make its labour a single commodity to be priced once.

The immediate reasons for combining were practical: to resist wage cuts, to shorten hours, to provide friendly benefits in sickness, unemployment and death, to regulate apprenticeship and entry to the trade, and to present grievances collectively where an individual complaint meant dismissal.

D. The law's response in England, in three phases.

1. Prohibition. Combination was a criminal conspiracy at common law, and the Combination Acts of 1799 and 1800 made it a statutory offence for workmen to combine to raise wages or reduce hours, triable summarily.

2. The first true union, the Madras Labour Union (1918), founded by B.P. Wadia, and the All India Trade Union Congress (1920).
3. The legal crisis: in the Buckingham and Carnatic Mills case (1920) the Madras High Court granted an injunction against the union's leaders and the employers sued them for damages for inducing breach of contracts of employment. Without legal personality or immunity, the officers were personally liable and the union's funds at risk. That was India's Taff Vale.
4. The legislative answer: N.M. Joshi's resolution of 1921, and the Indian Trade Unions Act, 1926, in force from 1 June 1927, giving registration, corporate status, and the immunities from criminal conspiracy (Section 17) and civil suit (Section 18).

F. The line to the modern statute. Those immunities survive as Sections 17 and 16 of the Industrial Relations Code, 2020; registration survives in Sections 6 to 9, now with the requirement of ten per cent of the workers or one hundred, whichever is less; and the problem the 1926 Act left unsolved, recognition, was finally answered nationally by Section 14 of the Code, with its sole negotiating union at fifty-one per cent and negotiating council at twenty per cent.

The First Schedule lists: classification of workers, whether permanent, temporary, apprentices, probationers, badlis or fixed term employment; manner of intimating periods and hours of work, holidays, pay days and wage rates; shift working; attendance and late coming; conditions of, procedure in applying for, and the authority which may grant leave and holidays; requirement to enter the premises by certain gates and liability to search; closing and reopening of sections of the establishment and temporary stoppages of work, with the rights and liabilities of employer and workers; termination of employment and the notice to be given; suspension or dismissal for misconduct, and acts or omissions which constitute misconduct; means of redress for workers against unfair treatment or wrongful exactions; and any other prescribed matter.

1. The employer shall prepare draft standing orders within six months from the commencement of the Code, based on the model standing orders, in respect of every matter in the First Schedule and any other matter he considers necessary given the nature of the activity, provided nothing is inconsistent with any provision of the Code.
2. He shall consult the Trade Unions, or the recognised negotiating union, or the members of the negotiating council.
3. He shall thereafter forward the draft, electronically or otherwise, to the certifying officer for certification.

E. Deemed certification. Section 30(3): where the employer adopts a model standing order of the Central Government with respect to matters relevant to his establishment, that model standing order shall be deemed to have been certified, and he shall forward the information to the certifying officer, who may, if he has any observation, direct the employer accordingly.

I. Duration and modification. Section 35(1): standing orders certified under Section 30(8) shall not be liable to modification until the expiry of six months from the date on which they or the last modifications came into operation, except on an agreement between the employer and the workers, a negotiating union, a Trade Union or other representative body. Section 35(2): thereafter an employer, worker, Trade Union or other representative body may apply to the certifying officer for modification, accompanied by copies of the modifications proposed and, where by agreement, a certified copy of the agreement. Section 35(3): the foregoing provisions apply to such an application as they apply to the certification of the first standing orders.

J. Discipline and subsistence allowance. Section 38: where a worker is suspended pending investigation or inquiry into charges of misconduct, the investigation or inquiry shall ordinarily be completed within ninety days from the date of suspension; and the standing orders shall provide for payment of subsistence allowance at fifty per cent of the wages the worker was entitled to immediately preceding the suspension for the first ninety days, and seventy-five per cent thereafter if the delay in completing the proceedings is not directly attributable to the conduct of the worker.

For full marks, cover: the Registrar; the criteria for registration; the contents of the constitution; the application; registration and the certificate; deemed registration of existing unions; cancellation and appeal; the effect of registration; and the distinction from recognition.

A. The Registrar. Section 5: the appropriate Government may, by notification, appoint a Registrar of Trade Unions, and such number of Additional Registrars, Joint Registrars and Deputy Registrars as it thinks fit, who shall exercise such powers and perform such duties of the Registrar as may be specified, subject to his superintendence and control.

B. Criteria for registration. Section 6.

1. Section 6(1): any seven or more members of a trade union may, by subscribing their names to the rules of the union and by otherwise complying with the provisions of the Code with respect to registration, apply for registration.

C. The constitution or rules. Section 7 requires the constitution or rules of the trade union to contain the prescribed provisions, which include: the name of the union; the whole of the objects for which it has been established; the purposes for which the general funds shall be applicable; the maintenance of a list of members and its inspection by office bearers and members; the admission of ordinary members, who shall be persons actually engaged or employed in the industry with which it is connected, and of honorary or temporary members as office bearers; the subscription payable; the conditions for benefits and for the imposition of fines and forfeitures; the manner of amending, varying or rescinding the rules; the manner of appointing and removing office bearers and the executive; the safe custody of funds, their annual audit and inspection of the account books; and the manner of dissolution.

Section 21 prescribes disqualifications of office bearers, and Section 23 the proportion of office bearers required to be connected with the industry.

D. The application. Section 8: every application for registration shall be made to the Registrar, electronically or otherwise, in such form and manner as may be prescribed, and shall be accompanied by:

1. a copy of the rules of the trade union;

3. Section 9(3): he shall enter the name and other particulars in a register maintained in that behalf.
4. Section 9(4): every trade union registered under the Trade Unions Act, 1926 and having valid registration immediately before the commencement of the Code shall be deemed to have been registered under the Code, provided it files with the Registrar a statement that the constitution of its executive is in accordance with the Code, with its rules updated in accordance with Section 7.

F. Cancellation. Section 9(5): the certificate of registration may be withdrawn or cancelled by the Registrar:

1. on the application of the trade union, verified in the prescribed manner; or
2. on information received by him regarding the contravention by the trade union of the provisions of the Code or the rules made thereunder, or of its own constitution or rules; or
3. if he is satisfied that the members of the trade union have fallen below ten per cent of the total workers or one hundred workers, whichever is less.

4. Section 16: immunity from civil suit in respect of acts done in contemplation or furtherance of an industrial dispute, on the ground only of inducing a breach of a contract of employment or interfering with trade, business or employment.
5. Section 17: immunity from punishment for criminal conspiracy under Section 120B(2) of the Indian Penal Code in respect of agreements to further the union's objects specified in Section 15.
6. Section 18: enforceability of agreements, which are not void merely because an object is in restraint of trade. Section 19: right to inspect the books. Section 20: rights of minors above fifteen to membership. Section 24: change of name and amalgamation. Section 25: dissolution. Section 26: annual returns. Section 27: recognition of trade unions at Central and State level.

Application. Section 65(1): Sections 67 to 69 do not apply to industrial establishments to which Chapter X applies, nor to establishments of a seasonal character or in which work is performed only intermittently, and the ordinary lay-off provisions operate in establishments employing fifty or more workers.

Compensation. Section 67: a worker other than a badli or casual worker, whose name is borne on the muster rolls and who has completed not less than one year of continuous service, is entitled, for all days during which he is laid off except weekly holidays, to compensation equal to fifty per cent of the total of the basic wages and dearness allowance that would have been payable to him had he not been laid off.

Muster rolls. Section 68: it is the duty of every employer to maintain a muster roll and to provide for entries by workers who present themselves for work.

Conditions precedent. Section 70: no worker in continuous service for not less than one year shall be retrenched until:

1. one month's notice in writing indicating the reasons for retrenchment has been given and the period of notice has expired, or the worker has been paid wages in lieu of notice;
2. he has been paid, at the time of retrenchment, compensation equivalent to fifteen days' average pay, or average pay of such number of days as may be notified, for every completed year of continuous service or any part thereof in excess of six months; and
3. notice in the prescribed manner is served on the appropriate Government or the specified authority.

Continuous service is defined in Section 66, the ordinary test being 240 days actually worked in the preceding twelve months.

For full marks, cover: the obligation and its universal reach; the components in Section 7; the criteria and forms of the rate in Section 6; the two procedures in Section 8 with the tripartite committee; the revision cycle; the floor wage in Section 9; the Advisory Boards; related provisions on the working day and overtime; and enforcement.

A. The obligation. Section 5 of the Code on Wages, 2019: no employer shall pay to any employee wages less than the minimum rate of wages notified by the appropriate Government. The obligation extends to every employee in every establishment, where the Minimum Wages Act, 1948 applied only to employments listed in its Schedule.

B. The components. Section 7(1). Any minimum rate of wages fixed or revised by the appropriate Government under Section 8 may consist of:

2. may in addition take into account the arduousness of the work, such as temperature or humidity normally difficult to bear, hazardous occupations or processes, or underground work, as may be prescribed; and
3. the norms of such fixation shall be as prescribed.

Section 6(7): the number of minimum rates shall, as far as possible, be kept at a minimum.

D. The form of the rate. Section 6(2): for time work or for piece work. Section 6(3): where employees are on piece work, a rate must also be fixed on a time work basis. Section 6(4): time rates may be fixed by the hour, by the day or by the month.

E. The procedure for fixing and revising. Section 8.

1. Two routes. Section 8(1): in fixing minimum rates for the first time or in revising them, the appropriate Government shall either:

(a) appoint as many committees as it considers necessary to hold enquiries and recommend in respect of such fixation or revision; or (b) publish its proposals by notification for the information of persons likely to be affected, specifying a date not less than two months from the date of the notification on which the proposals shall be taken into consideration.

F. The floor wage. Section 9. The Central Government shall fix a floor wage taking into account the minimum living standards of a worker, in such manner as may be prescribed, with a proviso permitting different floor wages for different geographical areas. Section 9(2): the minimum rates fixed by the appropriate Government under Section 6 shall not be less than the floor wage, and where the rates fixed earlier are higher, the Government shall not reduce them. Section 9(3): before fixing the floor wage the Central Government may obtain the advice of the Central Advisory Board and shall consult the State Governments in such manner as may be prescribed.

G. The Advisory Boards. Section 42: the Central Government shall constitute a Central Advisory Board of persons representing employers, an equal number representing employees, independent persons not exceeding one-third, and five representatives of the State Governments; and every State Government shall constitute a State Advisory Board on the same lines. One-third of the members shall be women. Their function is to advise on the fixation or revision of minimum wages, on increasing employment opportunities for women, on the extent to which women may be employed, and on other matters under the Code.