INTRODUCTION

For long several commissions and commissions debated reforms to industrial relations seeking
to amend trade union act to make registration requirements relatively more stringent than at
present (from any 7 being able to form a union proposed to be revised to 100 or 10% of the
employees), provide for statutory mechanism for recognition, deny industrial relations to
unregistered/minority unions, and specify more clearly not only trade union rights, but also
trade union obligations/responsibilities. The Dispute Act is also proposed to be amended to
provide for more emphasis on relations than disputes and set up an independent Industrial
Relations Commission in the place of existing dispute resolving machinery. Proposals have also
been made to consider constitution-negotiating councils where there is more than one union.
The central law, Trade Unions Act, 1926 provides for trade union registration, not trade union
recognition. By convention, all registered unions have begun to have industrial relations rights,
de facto, though not de jure. With the law permitting any seven employees being able to form
and register a union, the ground was open for a variety of craft, category, caste, etc., based
unions. Labour being a concurrent subject, certain state governments (like Maharashtra,
Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh) have passed separate legislations provided mandatory
mechanism for trade union recognition. Textile Industry in 1982 over the issue of, primarily,
representative character of two rival unions. A variety of methods are available for determining
the representative union. It can be done through any of the following methods: secret ballot,
check-off of membership verification. However, selection of representative union for
recognition as collective bargaining agent which is necessary to engage in collective bargaining
has itself become a major problem because different national federations of trade unions did
not agree to a common methods and left the problem for settlement according to location
realities! Even the National Labour Commission has left it vaguely. Proposals to alter the
situation, along with other major changes in the Trade Unions Act have become abortive since
1978.
The role of industry associations in collective bargaining seem to vary depending upon the
profile and background of industry and entrepreneurship. In a traditional, the engineering
industry, profession managers are the charge of variations in processes and outcomes are
discernible in each case which merit detailed study."
In some Industrial centres, both trade unions and employers, particularly have set up
coordination committees to adopt a joint/collective strategy to deal with collective bargaining
and related matters. Industry wise coordination is also taking place with the commencement of
industry wide agreements in core sectors like coal and steel. Oil industry, all of which is in public
sector now, also has a coordination committee though it does not have an industry wide
agreement.
For public employees, Joint Consultative Machinery and Board of Arbitration have been
constituted. Public pay is revised through pay commissions which are usually adopted once
every 12 years or so. The significant gap between central government pay systems and
industrial pay systems created considerable heartburn and discontent to those who feel they
were adversely affected particularly in the wake of some Supreme Court judgments
pronouncing public sector as the State.
In a few industries such as cement arbitration has replaced collective bargaining over wages
and working conditions while in others like media (newspapers) and sugar wage boards still
decide the wages and working conditions. In all other cases, with all its distortions, collective
bargaining is the main mechanism through which wages and working conditions are decided.
Over the years, the scope of collective bargaining has been widened to include virtually every
possible aspect of working relation including the quantum of overtime, shift manning, discipline
promotions and transfers, for instance. An industrial society is highly complex and dynamic
arrangement of differentiated groups, activities and institutional relationships intertwined with
a variety of attitudes ad expectations. Consequently, any specific social phenomenon, such as
industrial relations, cannot and should not be viewed in isolation from its wider context.