LL402 | Labour Law II

This is a core course mandated by Bar Council of India It is being taught in the Law School even before BCI mandated it. This course develops on Labour law I which relates to trade unions and industrial dispute resolution by and large. This course talks about minimum standards subject to which dispute resolution can be done or employer employee relationship can be evolved through bipartism or tripartism. The approach of the course is keeping Constitutional values as under the Directive Principles of State Policy and the judicial interpretations given to Article 14 and 21 of the Constitution of India at its core. There are many labour legislations and it will be impossible to teach all them. Hence in this course the legislations applicable in common to all the sectors of labour is predominantly undertaken.

Keeping constitutional values, especially as reflected in the Directive Principles of State Policy, there are many labour welfare legislations enacted.These legislation get further reinforcement, if we examine the judicial interpretation given to Art. 21 of the Constitution.  There are many legislation in the area of Social Security and labour welfare which prescribe minimum standards to be mandatorily observed by the employers.  Further the Industrial Dispute Resolution mechanisms like collective bargaining, conciliation, adjudication and voluntary arbitration can be used to improve upon the minimum labour standards prescribed by legislations.  In addition to the above, in the era of liberalisation, the professional personnel managers have come up with many innovative techniques to improve the efficiency of labour.  In the light of this background, this course on labour law will critically examine the following areas, wages, bonus, employment injury and compensation, retirement benefits and social security.   Incidentally areas like maternity benefit, indirect remuneration, physical conditions of work will also be examined.

Already the Code on Wages, 2019 has been passed and notified in the gazette on8th August,2019. However it has not been brought into effect. It consolidates Minimum Wages Act, Payment of Wages Act, Equal Remuneration Act and the Payment of Bonus Act. At this transition ,when new legislations are being enacted consolidating the old legislations with some minor changes in the earlier legislations, efforts will be made to teach the old legislations in sync with the new legislation which are being enacted.

The materials used will be mainly Bare Acts of the legislations concerned, along with case laws developed by the Supreme Court. We will also look into Labour Commission Reports I and II of 1969 and 2001 respectively. This is apart from the text book that will be prescribed as basic reading.

The pedagogy used is mainly lectures, Socratic discussion and resolving hypothetical case studies developed on either a real situation or on case laws.

For the sake of clarity and convenience, the course is divided into the 7 modules:

The Modules starts with wages and bonus extending up to 15 class hours. This part forms a major area of teaching. The another module which follows this will be employment injury compensation extending to 15 class hours. The third major area of the course is retirement benefits of 10 class hours. Miscellaneous legislations are clubbed together as a module towards the end with 8 class hours. A separate module with 10 class hours  is dedicated for the rights of woman labourers arising from special legislations like the Maternity Benefit Act, Protection of Women from Sexual Harassment at Workplace Act, 2013,Shops and Commercial Establishments Act, 1962, Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions Of Service) Act, 1996 etc. The course ends with discussion on new legislation yet to be brought into effect that has attempted to consolidate the legislations relating to wages and bonus.