A Recipe to Tear Down Trade Union

Context: Replacing all existing labour laws with the new Industrial Relations Code (IRC) will deter the fundamental and democratic rights of Trade Unions (TU).

Significance of Trade Unions: 

• Provide a collective voice to working people against the employers’ exploitative, unfair and illegal practices.
• Provide workers right to better wages, fairer employment conditions and safe and secure workplaces.

Evolution of Trade Unions (TU) in India:

• Emergence as a self-managed organisation of workers: in the 19th Century in the face of extreme exploitation.
• Legally recognised: under the colonial rule in 1926, with the passage of Trade Union Act (TUA) having the following provisions - 
• The law provided for a mechanism for the registration of trade unions, from which they derived rights and a framework governing their functioning.
• Bounded workers’ actions within a legal framework: by providing for deregistration if a trade union “contravened any provisions of the Act.”
• Provided immunity to the members and the elected members: by recognising that actions based on collective decisions by workers did not constitute a criminal conspiracy.
• Ensures workers right to press and agitate their claims: against the employer and advance them before the government and the judiciary.

Arguments against the Industrial Relations Code:

• Exclusion of workers from pre-legislative consultations: which includes the absence of the Opposition and ignoring substantive recommendations of the Parliamentary Standing Committee.

• Will deter collective action and the right to the association: by repealing the TUA, Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 and Industrial Employment (Standing Orders) Act, 1946.

• Widens the grounds for deregistration of TU : Now TU can be deregistered for contravention of unspecified provisions of the code. (Deregistration was limited to the internal functioning of a union.)

• Violates the principles of equality before the law and of natural justice: by shifting the balance in favour of employers in regards to deregistration of TU.

• Deregistered TU loses its immunity from prosecution for criminal conspiracy.
• They can no longer represent its members (the workers) before the dispute resolution machinery or in court. 

• The threat of extra-legal formations: like ‘struggle committees’ and ‘workers’ fronts due to the threat of deregistration ever-present.

• It will push employment dispute resolution outside the legal framework.
• It will lead to criminalising working-class dissent.

Conclusion: The IRC dilutes workers’ rights in favour of employers’ rights and undermines workers’ right to association and collective action.