Trade Union — Definition, Registration and Recognition

Suppose forty people in a Taloja factory hold a meeting, call themselves the Taloja Workers’ Front, and tell the owner that he must now negotiate with them. He asks one question: who are you, legally? If the answer is ‘a group of friends’, he can ignore them. If the answer is ‘a registered Trade Union, and the majority of your workers are our members’, he cannot. This topic is about the steps that turn a group of workers into a body the law, and the employer, must take seriously.

In two minutes

Under the Industrial Relations Code, 2020, a Trade Union is any combination formed primarily to regulate relations between workers and employers (or among workers, or among employers); it becomes a corporate body when registered under Chapter III, and it gains a seat at the bargaining table only when it is recognised as the sole negotiating union, or joins a negotiating council.

The rest of this chapter

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