The short answer is that conciliation is the entry point, not the whole journey, and the Code contains a deliberate escape hatch so that an employer cannot stall a case by simply not settling. Two smaller points clear the ground first.
The second point is about who starts the case. Under the Code, the application to the Tribunal in matters not settled by the conciliation officer is made by any concerned party. You do not have to persuade a Government to refer your dispute before it can be adjudicated. That is a real improvement over what older material describes, and it is the reason the current sequence is worth learning properly.
The sequence, and the forty five day exit
- The internal committee, where there is one. An establishment with twenty or more workers must have a Grievance Redressal Committee, and an aggrieved worker may apply to it within one year of the cause of action. It has thirty days to complete its proceedings.
- Conciliation. Where the Committee's decision does not satisfy you, or it does not decide within its thirty days, you have sixty days from that point to take the grievance to a conciliation officer. Where an industrial dispute simply exists or is apprehended, the conciliation officer holds proceedings on that footing.
- The direct route to the Tribunal. This is the provision to know. Notwithstanding the general conciliation section, a worker may make an application directly to the Tribunal after the expiry of forty five days from the date on which he made the application to the conciliation officer, and the Tribunal then has the same powers and jurisdiction as it has on an application after a failure report. So you file for conciliation, you engage with it, and if forty five days pass without a resolution you move.
- Or wait for the failure report. If conciliation runs its course and fails, the officer sends a failure report and you have ninety days from receiving it to apply to the Tribunal.
A direct application by a worker whose services were discharged, dismissed, retrenched or otherwise terminated must be made to the Tribunal before the expiry of two years from the date of that termination. And a conciliation officer shall not hold conciliation proceedings after two years from the date the dispute arose. Whichever path you take, two years is the wall. Older advice built around a three year period is built on a repealed statute.
A drafting wrinkle worth knowing about
The provision that takes a worker from the Grievance Redressal Committee to conciliation is expressed as filing that application through the Trade Union of which he is a member. For the great majority of employees in Bengaluru offices, who are not union members, that reads awkwardly. In practice the dispute is raised with the conciliation officer on the general footing that an industrial dispute exists, which it does, because the Code deems an individual termination to be an industrial dispute even where no other worker and no union is a party. If you are not in a union, do not let the wording deter you from filing; do put the deeming provision in your covering letter.
The claims that never need conciliation
Conciliation belongs to industrial disputes. Several of the most common claims are not industrial disputes at all and go elsewhere, faster:
- Unpaid wages, wrongful deductions and minimum wages go to the authority appointed under the Code on Wages, 2019, on an application by the employee, by a registered Trade Union of which the employee is a member, or by the Inspector-cum-Facilitator. That authority may order compensation in addition to the amount due, and the endeavour is to decide within three months.
- Gratuity goes to the competent authority under the gratuity chapter of the Code on Social Security, 2020.
- Removal or dismissal from a shop or commercial establishment in Karnataka goes on appeal to the prescribed authority under the Karnataka Shops and Commercial Establishments Act, 1961, which survived the codes. That appeal does not require you to win the argument about whether you are a worker, which is often its main attraction.
Choosing, rather than trying everything
The temptation is to file everywhere at once. Resist it for two reasons. Parallel proceedings on the same facts invite objections that cost more time than they save, and some routes foreclose others: once compensation has been awarded under the Karnataka provision, the same claim cannot then be taken to a civil suit. Decide first whether you are a worker, because that single question decides whether the conciliation and Tribunal machinery is open to you at all, and our note on whether you count as a worker under the Industrial Relations Code sets out the evidence that decides it.
Whichever way you go, put the conciliation application in early. It starts the forty five day clock, it is cheap, and even where it fails it produces a report that is itself a useful document. For why the older section numbers no longer match anything, see our overview of what the four labour codes changed for employees. Our guide on wrongful termination and employee rights in India takes the remedies in order.