ON APRIL 13, 2026, a demonstration led by garment factory workers in the Gautam Buddha Nagar district of Noida turned into a violent protest leading to fraught public order in several areas of the city. There were reported incidents of stone pelting, clashes between workers and police personnels, vehicles being set on fire, physical violence, amongst others. A large number of workers from several industrial establishments in Noida had gathered to protest for their long pending demand of wage hike and better working conditions.
Collective action escalated into serious law and order issues causing widespread disruption across the city. While attempts were made to frame this incident as a law and order crisis, one cannot overlook the fact that similar incidents have also occurred in other parts of the country like Ludhiana, several parts of Maharashtra, Telangana, amongst others, in the last few months. While the recent LPG crisis may have escalated matters, one would do well to not view the recent upheaval through the lens of exceptionalism. These incidents reveal a pattern of studied silence by the authorities towards the issues affecting the pan-Indian worker community, at large.
Notably, these worker protests have intensified since the enforcement of the four new labour codes. The overall sentiment of trade unions and workers’ organisations across the country towards the enforcement of the labour codes has been overwhelmingly critical. While the Noida episode might have drawn significant attention of the authorities leading to wage revisions, these incidents are symptoms of a broken industrial relations framework.
Trade unions as participatory agents in the industrial relations system
Trade unions act as institutions of workers’ voice in labour markets and further direct communication between workers and the management. In a good industrial relations system, trade unions play a critical role in collective bargaining processes, enabling economic benefits for both the employer and the worker. Trade unions operate as institutional channels for expression and aggregation of worker’s voices, contributing to ‘participatory benefits,’ that are an imperative for lasting industrial peace. Trade unionism doesn’t only affect wage premiums but it also produces certain non-wage effects like improved working conditions, better fringe benefits, lower exit of workers, improved job satisfaction of workers, better industrial relations, amongst others. In the Indian context, rather than reforming the country’s industrial relations system, to make it more democratic and effective at handling conflicts, the trends clearly point towards an increasing repression of worker’s voices and marginalization of unions.
Unpacking the new statutory reforms in relation to trade unions
Under the new labour codes, trade unions are regulated under the Industrial Relations Code, 2020 (‘IR Code’). The most significant contribution of the IR Code is the introduction of the concept of recognition of a sole negotiating trade union. Section 14 of the IR Code provides the criteria for recognition of the negotiating union. It provides that if there are multiple registered trade unions operating in an establishment, then the trade union having fifty one percent or more workers, in the muster roll of that industrial establishment, as its members, would be recognised by the employer of the industrial establishment as the sole negotiating union of workers.
If there is only one registered trade union in an industrial establishment then that trade union would become the sole negotiating union. Moreover, if no trade union is able to gather support of fifty one percent of workers, then, a negotiating council would be formed by such trade unions which would have not less than twenty five percent of workers in its support. The negotiating union would have the right to negotiate on all broad service conditions affecting workers with the employer in an industrial establishment.
Additionally, the IR Code significantly regulates the right to strike of workers as compared to the earlier legal framework. Workers are now required to give a strike notice prior to fourteen days before going on strike and the strike should happen within sixty days of the issuance of the notice. If the workers intend to strike after the statutory timeline of sixty days, then they must issue a fresh notice.
Earlier, these provisions were mandated only for public utility establishments like establishments concerning railways, electricity etc, where disruption would cause significant hardship. In contrast, the IR Code extends these provisions indiscriminately to all industrial establishments. Further, the IR Code bars strike action while conciliation proceedings are pending. Any attempt to strike in contravention of these provisions is deemed illegal and there are statutory fines and imprisonment prescribed for workers who would participate in illegal strike action.
Impact of these statutory reforms
To interpret the impact of these provisions, it is essential to gauge how these provisions would operate on the ground. Now, if we look at Section 14 of the IR Code, for each industrial establishment there could only be a single trade union which can be recognised as the bargaining agent of the workers in an industrial establishment. Industrial establishment defined under Section 2(r) of the IR Code is quite broad. It essentially refers to an independent industrial unit which is severable in terms of its function from other industrial units. For example, a company would have multiple plants having independent factory licenses. Now, as per Section 14 of the IR Code, each of these plants would have to be considered as separate independent industrial establishments and can have a sole negotiating union which would negotiate with the employer on important service conditions affecting the workers.
It is critical to understand that the sole negotiating union was envisaged to solve the fragmentation issue that purportedly arose with multiplicity of trade unions. The question that arises here is, whether the sole negotiation union framework under Section 14 of the IR Code, adequately addresses the fragmentation problem that it claims to solve? The political rhetoric around this claim is that by introducing provisions for recognition of trade unions, the Central government is attempting to solve the fragmentation in bargaining processes that arises with multiplicity of trade unions. Now, if we look at the latest data on how trade unions are organised in India, the data reveals a very interesting feature.
Out of 35468 registered workers’ unions, 88.7 per cent are state unions and remaining 11.3 per cent are Central unions. This indicates that trade union presence in India is highly localised, decentralised, and fragmented. The lack of presence of nationwide unions in the wider Indian trade union landscape indicates a lack of national coordination and collective bargaining strength. In the backdrop of this data, it is critical to analyse the nature of the collective bargaining framework that is pushed through the IR Code. Contrary to the pro-employer rhetoric, what Section 14 of the IR Code essentially envisages is not even an enterprise level bargaining, rather, it envisages a ‘plant level bargaining,’ given the broad definition of the term ‘industrial establishment’ in the IR Code. This in no way solves the issue of multiplicity of unions and fragmented bargaining process that it claims to solve.
The presence of multiplicity of unions in a decentralised bargaining ecosystem as that of India might seem a great solution on paper but it inherently prevents workers from forming any firm level or sector level solidarity. The absence of a coordinating mechanism between trade unions and sectoral collective bargaining processes creates no bargaining leverage for the workers. Contrary to the political rhetoric, this does not even centralise any bargaining process to improve the worker’s leverage, rather, it continues to expose workers to the same structural fragmentation which dilutes their collective strength.
On the question of initiating strike action, a deliberate attempt has been made by the legislature to make it difficult to organise strike action by imposing procedural restraints. The Central government has justified these provisions on the ground that these would allow a window for negotiation between employers and workers, and promote collective bargaining better. The International Labour Organisation’s (‘ILO’) standards on strike action recognise the right to strike as an extension of the broader freedom of association. It recognises the right to strike as a right and not merely a social act. It has maintained that the legal restrictions on the right to strike should not be excessive and that the categories of workers who have adequate access to the exercise of right to strike should not be limited. It has maintained that restrictions on the right to strike imposed by national legislations in the form of prior notice requirements, imposition of compulsory conciliation or other dispute resolution mechanisms, imposition of penal sanctions, should not render the right to strike difficult to exercise on ground.
In essence, the IR Code has made exercise of right to strike procedural and legality driven, instead of momentum driven, affecting the bargaining leverage of workers in negotiations with the employer. It wantonly defies the function of labour laws which is to reduce the inherent bargaining inequality that characterizes employer-employee relationship. Interestingly, more man days have been lost due to employer lockouts rather than worker-initiated strikes over the past decade.
What lies ahead
The Indian workforce consists of different categories of workers. Most of these workers are precarious workers who are bereft from experiencing conditions of decent work as envisaged by the ILO. Trade unions can become actors of decent work by participating effectively in collective bargaining processes. It can become an aggregator of workers’ voice, channel of communication with the employer and can help ameliorate worker’s discontent. Factors such as informalisation, rise of new forms of work which are restructuring the traditional standard employer-employee relationship and the hollowing out of industrial relations institutions also cannot be lost sight of. The key to mitigating labour unrest lies in ushering in an industrial relations framework, that lends a voice to workers without pathologizing their activism as a form of industrial disruption or unrest.
