Engagement and Work-Life Balance; Industrial Relations, Welfare and Social Security; Trade Unions and Collective Bargaining; IHRM and Green HRM
2. Industrial relations: disputes and grievance management, labour welfare and social security
Industrial relations is the web of relationships among employers, employees, their organisations and the state over the terms of employment — Dunlop's systems model (1958) of actors, contexts and a web of rules bound by a shared ideology. Its perspectives are unitary (one team, conflict is pathological), pluralist (legitimate competing interests reconciled by bargaining — Flanders, Clegg) and radical or Marxist (conflict inherent in the wage relation); Fox's frames of reference name the first two. India's approach was set by the Industrial Disputes Act 1947, tripartism (the Indian Labour Conference since 1942), and the Code of Discipline of 1958. An industrial dispute (s. 2(k)) is any dispute between employers and workmen, or among workmen, connected with employment, non-employment, terms of employment or conditions of labour; an individual dismissal is deemed a dispute under s. 2A. Forms of conflict: strike (concerted cessation of work — general, sympathetic, go-slow, tools-down, sit-down, gherao, hunger strike, wildcat), lockout (the employer's counterpart), lay-off (temporary inability to give work — half wages as compensation), retrenchment (termination for surplus, with one month's notice and 15 days' wages per year), closure, and for public utilities 14 days' notice before a strike or lockout (s. 22).
| Body | Section | Nature and role |
|---|---|---|
| Works committee | 3 | Bipartite; establishments of 100 or more workmen; promotes amity, no adjudicatory power |
| Conciliation officer and board of conciliation | 4, 5, 12, 13 | Mediation; a settlement reached is binding; the officer reports within 14 days, the board within two months |
| Court of inquiry | 6 | Fact-finding only; reports within six months |
| Labour court | 7, Second Schedule | Adjudicates matters in the Second Schedule — standing orders, dismissal and reinstatement, legality of strikes and lockouts |
| Industrial tribunal | 7A, Third Schedule | Wages, hours, bonus, leave, retrenchment, rationalisation and any Second Schedule matter |
| National tribunal | 7B | Disputes of national importance or affecting establishments in more than one State; constituted by the Centre |
| Voluntary arbitration | 10A | Parties refer a dispute by written agreement to an arbitrator of their choice before it is referred for adjudication; the award is binding |
| Grievance redressal committee | 9C (2010 amendment) | Every establishment of 20 or more workmen; equal employer and worker members, up to six; individual grievances |
| Industrial Relations Code 2020 | Replaces the ID Act, Trade Unions Act and Standing Orders Act | Passed 2020, in force from 21 November 2025, when the three Acts were repealed; a single 'industrial tribunal' with two members replaces labour courts and tribunals; 14 days' notice of strike in every establishment; 'negotiating union' recognition at 51% membership; fixed-term employment; standing orders above 300 workers; grievance committee up to ten members |
A grievance is any discontent or dissatisfaction, expressed or not, valid or not, arising out of anything connected with the company that an employee thinks, believes or even feels is unfair, unjust or inequitable (Keith Davis). Its causes are wages, working conditions, supervision, discipline, promotion and transfers, and its handling is by a formal procedure — the Model Grievance Procedure of the Indian Labour Conference (1958) with five steps from the immediate superior through the departmental head, the grievance committee and the manager to voluntary arbitration, each with time limits — and the open-door policy, the step-ladder procedure, and the exit interview and opinion survey as detection tools. Labour welfare is anything done for the intellectual, physical, moral and economic betterment of workers over and above wages and statutory obligations (the Labour Investigation Committee), classified as intramural and extramural, statutory and voluntary; its theories are the police, religion, philanthropic, trusteeship (Gandhi), placating, public relations and functional theories. Statutory welfare came from the Factories Act 1948 — washing, storing, sitting, first-aid (one box per 150 workers), canteen above 250 workers, shelters and rest rooms above 150, crèche above 30 women workers, welfare officer above 500 workers — the Plantations Labour Act 1951, Mines Act 1952, Contract Labour Act 1970 and the Building and Other Construction Workers Act 1996; the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code 2020, in force from 21 November 2025, folds thirteen such Acts together into one framework of welfare facilities that the appropriate government prescribes, so the thresholds that now apply should be checked against the Code and its rules. Social security is the protection society gives its members through public measures against the economic and social distress caused by sickness, maternity, injury, unemployment, invalidity, old age and death (ILO Convention 102 of 1952, which lists nine branches). India's classic statutory pillars: the Employees' Compensation Act 1923 (formerly Workmen's Compensation), the Employees' State Insurance Act 1948 (medical, sickness, maternity, disablement, dependants' and funeral benefits; wage ceiling 21,000 rupees; contribution 3.25% employer and 0.75% employee), the Employees' Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 1952 (EPF, Employees' Pension Scheme 1995, EDLI; 12% each; establishments of 20 or more), the Maternity Benefit Act 1961, the Payment of Gratuity Act 1972, and the Unorganised Workers' Social Security Act 2008; the Code on Social Security 2020, in force from 21 November 2025, subsumes nine Acts, extends cover to gig and platform workers and creates a National Social Security Board. Public schemes: Atal Pension Yojana, PM Shram Yogi Maandhan, PM Jeevan Jyoti and Suraksha Bima Yojanas, Ayushman Bharat, the e-Shram portal (2021) for unorganised workers.
3. Trade unions and collective bargaining
A trade union is a continuous association of wage earners for the purpose of maintaining or improving the conditions of their working lives (Sidney and Beatrice Webb); the Trade Unions Act 1926 defines it as any combination formed primarily to regulate relations between workmen and employers, workmen and workmen, or employers and employers. Registration under the Act needs seven members, and since the 2001 amendment at least 10% of the workmen or 100, whichever is less, with a minimum of seven; a registered union is a body corporate with immunity from civil and criminal liability for acts in furtherance of a trade dispute, and not more than one-third of its office-bearers or five, whichever is less, may be outsiders in the organised sector. Types are craft, industrial, general and federation unions; functions are militant or protective (bargaining, strikes), fraternal or welfare, and political. India's history runs from the Bombay Mill Hands Association (1890, Lokhande), the Madras Labour Union (1918, B. P. Wadia — the first organised union), the All India Trade Union Congress (1920, first president Lala Lajpat Rai) and the Royal Commission on Labour (1929–31) to the central federations of today — BMS, INTUC, AITUC, HMS, CITU and others recognised as central trade union organisations on the 2013 verification. Its problems: multiplicity and rivalry, small size and poor finances, outside and political leadership, low membership density in the unorganised sector, and, until the codes, the absence of a central law on recognition (the Code of Discipline 1958 and State laws such as Maharashtra's filled the gap; the IR Code 2020, in force from 21 November 2025, introduces the 'negotiating union' at 51% and a negotiating council otherwise). Theories of the labour movement: Webbs (industrial democracy), Perlman (job consciousness), Hoxie (functional types), Tannenbaum (technology), Commons, and Marx (class struggle); Gandhi's trusteeship shaped the Ahmedabad Textile Labour Association.
| Aspect | Content |
|---|---|
| Definition and origin | Negotiation between an employer or group of employers and a workers' organisation to reach agreement on terms of employment (ILO); the term is Beatrice Webb's (1891); ILO Convention 98 (1949) on the right to organise and bargain collectively; India has not ratified Conventions 87 and 98 |
| Nature | Collective (group against group), bipartite, continuous, dynamic, a flexible give-and-take; industrial democracy in action; both a process and an outcome (the agreement) |
| Types (Chamberlain and Kuhn; Walton and McKersie) | Distributive or conjunctive (fixed pie — wages, zero-sum); integrative or cooperative (mutual gains — productivity, safety); productivity bargaining (concessions traded for productivity gains); composite (wages plus employment security, investment, working conditions); attitudinal structuring and intra-organisational bargaining as the other two Walton-McKersie sub-processes; concession bargaining in downturns |
| Levels | Plant or enterprise (most common in India), industry-cum-region (textiles, jute, banks — the bipartite bank settlements), national (coal, steel, ports); centralised versus decentralised bargaining |
| Process | Preparation (data, mandates, BATNA), charter of demands, negotiation (opening, exploring, bargaining, closing), agreement drafting, ratification and registration as a settlement under s. 18 of the ID Act (binding on parties, and on all workmen when reached in conciliation), administration and grievance handling under the agreement |
| Preconditions and hindrances in India | Needs a strong, recognised, representative union, a willing employer, good faith and the absence of state adjudication as an easy alternative; hindered by union multiplicity, lack of recognition law, compulsory adjudication under the ID Act, political leadership, and low unionisation in the unorganised sector |
| Workers' participation in management | The cooperative counterpart of bargaining: works committees (1947), joint management councils (1958), worker directors in public-sector banks (1970), shop and joint councils (1975, the 20-point programme), the 1983 scheme, Article 43A of the Constitution (42nd Amendment, 1976), the lapsed Participation of Workers in Management Bill 1990; forms — information sharing, consultation, co-determination (Germany's Mitbestimmung), self-management; Sachar Committee 1978 |
4. International HRM and the HR challenge of international business; Green HRM
International human resource management is HRM across national borders — Morgan's model of three dimensions: the HR activities (procure, allocate, utilise), the countries (host, home, third) and the categories of employee (host-country nationals, parent-country nationals, third-country nationals). Its staffing philosophy follows Perlmutter's EPRG typology (1969): ethnocentric (key posts filled by parent-country nationals), polycentric (host-country nationals run subsidiaries), regiocentric (regional pools) and geocentric (the best person regardless of nationality). Expatriate management is the core: selection (technical skill, cultural adaptability, family situation — the spouse is the commonest cause of failure), pre-departure training (Mendenhall and Oddou's rigour matched to cultural distance; Tung's framework), cross-cultural adjustment (Black, Mendenhall and Oddou's work, interaction and general adjustment; Oberg's culture-shock U-curve; the W-curve including re-entry), compensation (the balance-sheet approach that keeps the expatriate whole with cost-of-living, housing, hardship and tax allowances; the going-rate or host-country approach; lump-sum and cafeteria approaches; tax equalisation), performance appraisal across distance, and repatriation, whose neglect — 'out of sight, out of mind', loss of status and unused skills — drives post-return turnover. The HR challenges of international business are cultural (Hofstede and Trompenaars differences in motivation, leadership and communication), legal (labour laws, work permits, data protection), economic (cost-of-living and currency), the standardisation-versus-localisation tension in HR practices, managing a diverse workforce and virtual global teams, global talent mobility, and the ethics of labour standards in supply chains; Dowling and Welch's framework and Bartlett and Ghoshal's multinational, global, international and transnational organisation types frame the answers, and the transnational — global efficiency, local responsiveness and worldwide learning at once — is the ideal.
| Element | Content |
|---|---|
| Concept | HRM policies and practices that promote the sustainable use of resources and environmental responsibility — Renwick, Redman and Maguire (2013) map it onto the ability-motivation-opportunity framework; Wehrmeyer's Greening People (1996) is the founding text; part of the environmental management system and the triple bottom line |
| Practices | Green job design and analysis (environmental duties in job descriptions); green recruitment and selection (employer branding on sustainability, paperless hiring, screening for environmental values); green training (awareness, skills for waste and energy reduction); green performance management (environmental KPIs, green targets in appraisal); green pay and reward (incentives for green behaviour, green benefits such as cycle-to-work and public-transport subsidies); green employee relations and involvement (green teams, suggestion schemes, unions in environmental committees); green exit (knowledge retention) |
| Outcomes and drivers | Organisational citizenship behaviour for the environment (Boiral), green competencies, pro-environmental behaviour, reduced footprint and cost, employer attractiveness; driven by regulation (ISO 14001, BRSR reporting in India for the top 1,000 listed companies), stakeholder pressure, cost savings and the sustainable development goals |
Key takeaways
- Engagement is Kahn's 1990 concept, measured by vigour, dedication and absorption (UWES) or Gallup's Q12; work-family conflict is time-, strain- and behaviour-based (Greenhaus and Beutell); maternity leave is 26 weeks since 2017.
- Dunlop's systems model frames IR; the ID Act 1947 machinery runs works committee, conciliation, court of inquiry, labour court, industrial tribunal, national tribunal and voluntary arbitration under s. 10A; public utilities need 14 days' strike notice; the IR Code 2020 merges three Acts and has been in force since 21 November 2025, when they were repealed.
- The Factories Act 1948 required a canteen above 250 workers, a crèche above 30 women and a welfare officer above 500, provisions now carried by the OSH Code 2020; ESI covers wages up to 21,000 rupees; EPF is 12% each in establishments of 20 or more; ILO Convention 102 defines social security; the Code on Social Security 2020 subsumes nine Acts; all four codes are in force from 21 November 2025.
- The Trade Unions Act 1926 needs seven members and, since 2001, 10% or 100 workmen whichever is less; AITUC dates from 1920; collective bargaining is the Webbs' term, distributive versus integrative is Walton and McKersie, and a settlement in conciliation binds all workmen under s. 18.
- IHRM staffs by Perlmutter's EPRG; expatriate pay uses the balance-sheet approach; the spouse is the commonest cause of expatriate failure and repatriation the neglected stage; Green HRM applies AMO to environmental goals through green recruitment, training, appraisal and rewards.
Practice questions (9)
Attempt each one before opening the answer. Every explanation names the tempting wrong option as well as the right one, because that is where marks are lost.
The concept of employee engagement as 'the harnessing of organisation members' selves to their work roles' was introduced in 1990 by:
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Answer: A — William Kahn
Kahn's Academy of Management Journal paper founded the engagement literature; Schaufeli's UWES and Gallup's Q12 are the measures. Herzberg is motivation-hygiene, Ulrich HR roles, Dunlop the IR systems model.Under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, a works committee must be constituted in an industrial establishment employing:
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Answer: A — 100 or more workmen
Section 3 sets the threshold at 100 workmen for the bipartite works committee. Twenty is the threshold for the grievance redressal committee under section 9C, and 500 for a welfare officer under the Factories Act.Voluntary arbitration of an industrial dispute, by written agreement of the parties before the dispute is referred for adjudication, is provided under which section of the Industrial Disputes Act?
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Answer: A — Section 10A
Section 10A is voluntary arbitration. Section 7A constitutes industrial tribunals, section 2A deems an individual dismissal an industrial dispute, and section 22 requires 14 days' notice of strike or lockout in a public utility service.Under the Factories Act, 1948, a canteen must be provided in a factory ordinarily employing more than:
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Answer: A — 250 workers
Canteen above 250; shelters, rest rooms and lunch rooms above 150; a crèche where more than 30 women are employed; a welfare officer above 500. These are the Factories Act figures the paper asks; the Act was consolidated into the OSH Code 2020, in force from 21 November 2025, which frames welfare facilities for the appropriate government to prescribe, so the thresholds that now apply should be checked against the Code and its rules.ILO Convention No. 102 of 1952 is the minimum-standards convention on:
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Answer: A — Social security
Convention 102 lists nine branches of social security — medical care, sickness, unemployment, old age, employment injury, family, maternity, invalidity and survivors' benefits. Convention 87 is freedom of association, 98 the right to organise and bargain collectively, 131 minimum wage fixing.After the 2001 amendment, registration of a trade union under the Trade Unions Act, 1926 requires that its members be at least:
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Answer: A — 10% of the workmen or 100, whichever is less, subject to a minimum of seven
Seven members was the original 1926 rule; the 2001 amendment added the 10%-or-100 floor to curb tiny rival unions. Fifty-one per cent is the IR Code 2020 threshold for recognition as the sole negotiating union, not for registration.Collective bargaining over a fixed pool of resources, such as a wage increase, where one side's gain is the other's loss, is called:
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Answer: A — Distributive bargaining
Walton and McKersie's distributive bargaining is zero-sum; integrative bargaining seeks mutual gains; productivity bargaining trades concessions for output gains; attitudinal structuring manages the relationship between the parties.In Perlmutter's EPRG typology of international staffing, filling key positions in every subsidiary with parent-country nationals is the:
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Answer: A — Ethnocentric approach
Ethnocentric trusts home-country managers; polycentric lets host-country nationals run subsidiaries; regiocentric draws on regional pools; geocentric picks the best person regardless of nationality and marks the transnational firm.The expatriate compensation method that aims to keep the employee 'whole' by adding cost-of-living, housing, hardship and tax allowances to the home-country salary is the:
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Answer: A — Balance-sheet approach
The balance-sheet approach is the commonest for parent-country expatriates. The going-rate approach pays the local market rate; the cafeteria approach lets the expatriate choose benefits; the lump-sum approach hands over a single amount to allocate.