The famous 'Giri' approach in Industrial Relations in India espouses the cause of

Correct — B, (b) Compulsory Collective Bargaining.

SORT THE FOUR OPTIONS FIRST AND THE ANSWER APPEARS. Three of them — adjudication, conciliation and arbitration — are ways in which a THIRD PARTY enters an industrial dispute. Only one names settlement by the PARTIES THEMSELVES. The Giri approach is defined by its insistence on the second, so the option naming collective bargaining is the one the Commission's key takes.

WHAT V. V. GIRI ACTUALLY HELD. Giri came to the question as a trade unionist before he came to it as a minister: he was a founder and long-serving general secretary of the All India Railwaymen's Federation and twice president of the All India Trade Union Congress. As Union Labour Minister in the early 1950s he pressed the view that industrial disputes should be settled by negotiation between management and workers, through bipartite machinery built inside each industry and each unit, and that where negotiation broke down the answer was MORE negotiation — conciliation to bring the parties back to the table, and voluntary arbitration if they agreed to it — rather than a compulsory reference to a tribunal.

HIS OBJECTION TO COMPULSORY ADJUDICATION was not that tribunals decide badly. It was that a system in which either side can always obtain a government reference removes the incentive to bargain at all. A union that can win by petitioning the state need never build the membership and the discipline that make bargaining effective, and an employer who expects an award need never negotiate seriously. Giri's argument was that compulsory adjudication cuts at the root of the trade union movement itself. The position cost him office: he left the Government in 1954 amid disagreements that included opposition to his own approach.

WHERE THE WORD 'COMPULSORY' SITS IN THE KEYED OPTION. It attaches to the BARGAINING, not to an outside award — a legal duty on the parties to recognise each other and negotiate in good faith, which is the standard reform proposal put forward as the ALTERNATIVE to compulsory adjudication rather than a version of it. Obliging the parties to bargain is the opposite of obliging them to submit to someone else's decision.

Giri went on to be Vice-President and then President of India, and the Government's national labour research institute is named after him.

The stem prints 'Giri' in single quotation marks and capitalises 'Industrial Relations', and it ends on 'the cause of' with no punctuation.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)Adjudication — The precise opposite of the Giri position, and the option that a candidate picks who recognises the name as belonging to Indian labour history without knowing what the man argued. Adjudication under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 means a compulsory reference by the appropriate Government of a dispute to a Labour Court, an Industrial Tribunal or a National Tribunal, which hears the parties and makes an AWARD that binds them. It is state-imposed settlement, and it is what the Giri approach was formulated against. His argument was structural rather than procedural: where the state will always decide, neither side has any reason to bargain, so compulsory adjudication weakens the very trade union movement that industrial relations depend on. Choosing this option attributes to him the doctrine he spent his ministerial career opposing.
• (c)Conciliation — Present in the Giri scheme, but as an instrument rather than as the cause espoused. Conciliation is third-party assistance: under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 a conciliation officer or a Board of Conciliation brings the parties together, explores a settlement and reports, but has no power to impose anything — any settlement is still the parties' own. That is why it fits comfortably inside an approach built on negotiation, and Giri did contemplate conciliation as the route back to the table when direct talks broke down. But it is auxiliary. The approach is named for its insistence that the parties settle their own disputes, and conciliation is a way of helping them do so, not the principle itself. The distinction between the principle and the machinery that supports it is exactly what an option set like this one is testing.
• (d)Arbitration — The most defensible of the three, and it needs to be answered carefully rather than dismissed. VOLUNTARY arbitration — a reference by written agreement of both parties under section 10A of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 — genuinely belongs to the Giri prescription, precisely because it rests on the parties' consent rather than on a government order. But the option as printed says only 'Arbitration', and arbitration in the general sense is a third party hearing both sides and handing down a binding award, which is the family of remedies the approach exists to displace. More importantly, arbitration is where Giri's scheme turns when bargaining has FAILED; the cause it espouses is that the parties bargain in the first place. Naming the fallback rather than the principle is the error this option is built to catch, and the same distinction — voluntary arbitration good, compulsory adjudication bad, collective bargaining first — is worth carrying into every question on this topic.

APPROACHES TO SETTLING INDUSTRIAL DISPUTES divide on a single question: does the settlement come from the parties, or from outside them ?

COLLECTIVE BARGAINING — negotiation between an employer and a recognised union, producing an agreement both are bound by because both made it. Bipartite. CONCILIATION — a neutral third party assists the negotiation and may propose terms, but cannot impose them. Any settlement remains the parties' own. ARBITRATION — a third party hears both sides and gives an award. VOLUNTARY where the parties refer the dispute by agreement; compulsory where the state refers it. ADJUDICATION — compulsory reference by the state to a labour court or tribunal, whose award binds the parties whether or not they consented.

THE STATUTORY MACHINERY in India is set out in the INDUSTRIAL DISPUTES ACT, 1947: the Works Committee for joint consultation at the unit level under section 3; conciliation officers under section 4 and Boards of Conciliation under section 5; a Court of Inquiry under section 6; Labour Courts under section 7, Industrial Tribunals under section 7A and National Tribunals under section 7B; reference of disputes by the appropriate Government under section 10; and voluntary reference to arbitration by written agreement of the parties under section 10A. The Act also regulates strikes and lock-outs, lay-off, retrenchment and closure, and unfair labour practices.

THE GIRI APPROACH is a position within that framework rather than a statute. V. V. GIRI — trade unionist, founder and general secretary of the All India Railwaymen's Federation, twice president of the All India Trade Union Congress, Union Labour Minister in the early 1950s, later Vice-President and then President of India — argued that industrial peace built on state compulsion is not industrial peace at all. His prescription was bipartite machinery in every industry and every unit, settlement by negotiation, conciliation to restore negotiation when it failed, and voluntary arbitration by consent; and his objection to compulsory adjudication was that it removes the incentive for either side to bargain and so weakens the trade union movement. He left the Government in 1954 amid disagreement over this and related questions.

WHY INDIA LEANED THE OTHER WAY. Compulsory adjudication was retained because bargaining presupposes a strong, single and recognised union on the workers' side, and Indian industry has long had multiple unions in the same establishment with no statutory duty on the employer to recognise any of them. Without recognition and a duty to negotiate, bargaining cannot happen, and adjudication fills the vacuum. That is why proposals in this field — including the Code of Discipline adopted in the late 1950s and the recommendations of the first National Commission on Labour — have repeatedly paired the promotion of collective bargaining with machinery for identifying the union entitled to bargain.

CONSOLIDATION. The Industrial Relations Code, 2020 brings together the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, the Trade Unions Act, 1926 and the Industrial Employment (Standing Orders) Act, 1946, and provides for a sole negotiating union or a negotiating council in an establishment — a direct attempt at the recognition problem that has held bargaining back.

Key facts

• The Giri approach holds that industrial disputes should be settled by NEGOTIATION between the parties themselves — collective bargaining supported by bipartite machinery in each industry and unit.
• V. V. Giri opposed COMPULSORY ADJUDICATION on the ground that a system in which the state always decides removes the incentive to bargain and weakens the trade union movement.
• Where negotiation failed, his prescription was conciliation to restore negotiation and voluntary arbitration by consent, not a compulsory reference to a tribunal.
• Giri was a founder and long-serving general secretary of the All India Railwaymen's Federation and twice president of the All India Trade Union Congress before becoming Union Labour Minister.
• He left the Government in 1954 amid disagreements that included opposition to his approach; he later became Vice-President and then President of India.
• 'Compulsory collective bargaining' means a legal duty on the parties to recognise each other and bargain in good faith — the standard proposed alternative to compulsory adjudication, not a form of it.
• Adjudication under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 is a reference by the appropriate Government to a Labour Court (section 7), an Industrial Tribunal (section 7A) or a National Tribunal (section 7B), whose award binds the parties.
• Conciliation under sections 4 and 5 of the same Act assists a settlement but cannot impose one; voluntary arbitration under section 10A requires the written agreement of both parties.
• Collective bargaining in India has been held back by the absence of a statutory duty to recognise a union, which is why the Industrial Relations Code, 2020 provides for a sole negotiating union or a negotiating council.

Common traps

• Attributing adjudication to Giri because his name is associated with Indian labour law. It is the doctrine he argued against.
• Missing the distinction between VOLUNTARY arbitration, which rests on the parties' agreement under section 10A, and compulsory adjudication, which does not.
• Reading the word 'compulsory' in the keyed option as though it made the settlement compulsory. It attaches to the duty to bargain, not to an outside award.
• Confusing conciliation with arbitration. A conciliator assists a settlement and cannot impose one; an arbitrator decides and the award binds.
• Learning the label without the substance, which answers this one item and none of the many other questions built on the same material.
• Assuming collective bargaining is the norm in Indian industrial relations. Adjudication has dominated in practice, largely because union recognition has had no statutory foundation.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, a reference of an industrial dispute to arbitration by written agreement of the parties is provided for by

  • (a)section 7A
  • (b)section 10
  • (c)section 10A
  • (d)section 12

  Answer(c) section 10A — voluntary reference of a dispute to arbitration, which requires the written agreement of both parties and is the mechanism the Giri approach relies on where bargaining fails. Section 7A constitutes Industrial Tribunals, section 10 empowers the appropriate Government to refer a dispute to a Board, Court or Tribunal, and section 12 sets out the duties of conciliation officers.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following methods of settling an industrial dispute results in a binding decision imposed by an outside authority rather than in a settlement reached by the parties themselves ?

  • (a)Collective bargaining
  • (b)Conciliation
  • (c)Adjudication
  • (d)A works committee

  Answer(c) Adjudication — a Labour Court, Industrial Tribunal or National Tribunal hears the dispute and makes an award that binds the parties whether or not they consented to the reference. Collective bargaining produces an agreement the parties made themselves; a conciliation officer can assist and propose but cannot impose; and a works committee is a bipartite body for joint consultation under section 3 of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947.