Works Committee, Safety Committee and Canteen Management Committee are the examples of

Correct — A, (a) workers’ participation in management. Each of the three bodies named in the stem is a joint committee on which representatives of the workers sit beside representatives of the employer and take part in decisions about how the establishment is run. That is what workers’ participation in management means, and each of the three is created by a specific statutory provision a candidate can look up.

The Works Committee comes from section 3 of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947. Section 3(1) allows the appropriate Government, by general or special order, to require an industrial establishment in which one hundred or more workmen are employed, or have been employed on any day in the preceding twelve months, to constitute a Works Committee of representatives of the employer and of the workmen — 'so however that the number of representatives of workmen on the Committee shall not be less than the number of representatives of the employer'. The workmen's representatives are chosen from among the workmen of the establishment in consultation with their registered trade union, if there is one. Section 3(2) states its duty: to promote measures for securing and preserving amity and good relations between the employer and workmen and, to that end, to comment upon matters of their common interest or concern and endeavour to compose any material difference of opinion in respect of such matters.

The Safety Committee comes from section 41G of the Factories Act, 1948, and that section settles the question by its own marginal heading, which reads 'Workers’ participation in safety management'. It requires the occupier, in every factory where a hazardous process takes place or where hazardous substances are used or handled, to set up a Safety Committee 'consisting of equal number of representatives of workers and management to promote co-operation between the workers and the management in maintaining proper safety and health at work and to review periodically the measures taken in that behalf'. A proviso lets the State Government exempt a factory or class of factories by written order for reasons recorded, and sub-section (2) leaves the composition, tenure, rights and duties to be prescribed by rules.

The Canteen Managing Committee comes from section 46 of the same Act. Section 46(1) empowers the State Government to require a canteen in a specified factory where more than two hundred and fifty workers are ordinarily employed, and section 46(2)(d) empowers it to make rules providing for 'the constitution of a managing committee for the canteen and representation of the workers in the management of the canteen'. Participation is written into the clause itself.

Behind all three stands Article 43A of the Constitution, a Directive Principle inserted by the Forty-second Amendment in 1976, by which the State is to take steps, by suitable legislation or in any other way, to secure the participation of workers in the management of undertakings, establishments or other organisations engaged in any industry. This paper asks that Article directly a few questions later, and the two items are best learnt together.

Why the others are wrong

• (b)workers’ education schemes — Workers’ education is the teaching of workers about trade unionism, labour legislation, their rights and duties and the working of the economy, so that they can use the institutions available to them. In India it is delivered through the Central Board for Workers’ Education, set up in 1958 as a registered society under the Societies Registration Act, 1860 and functioning as an autonomous tripartite body under the Ministry of Labour and Employment, since renamed as the national board for workers’ education and development. Education equips a worker to participate; it is not itself participation, and none of the three bodies in the stem is a training institution. That same Board appears as an option in a later question in this paper, on statutory machinery.
• (c)workers’ cooperatives — A workers’ cooperative is an enterprise owned by the workers themselves, who supply the capital, take the risk and appoint the management. The relationship is one of ownership, and there is no separate employer on the other side of the table. The three committees in the stem are the opposite case: the employer remains the owner and the manager, and the workers are given a defined voice inside his establishment. Mistaking one for the other collapses the distinction on which the whole subject rests — participation presupposes two parties, and self-management dissolves them into one.
• (d)workers’ suggestion schemes — A suggestion scheme invites individual employees to propose improvements, usually with a reward for a suggestion that is adopted. It can be a rudimentary channel of involvement, but it is not what the three named bodies are. A suggestion scheme is individual rather than representative, it creates no joint body and no seats, it confers no right to be consulted, and management remains entirely free to act on a suggestion or ignore it. Each of the three committees in the stem, by contrast, is constituted under a statutory provision, has a fixed composition with representatives of both sides, and meets to consider matters jointly.

Workers’ participation in management means giving employees a share in the decisions of the enterprise, and it is best understood as a ladder rather than a single arrangement. The lowest rung is information sharing, where management merely tells; above it comes consultation, where workers’ representatives are heard before a decision is taken; above that joint decision-making, where certain matters cannot be decided without agreement; and at the top self-management, where the workers themselves own and run the enterprise. India’s arrangements sit mostly on the middle rungs. Article 43A directs the State to secure participation. A handful of statutory joint bodies exist — the Works Committee under section 3 of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, the Safety Committee under section 41G of the Factories Act, 1948, and the canteen managing committee contemplated by section 46(2)(d) of that Act. Alongside them run non-statutory schemes: Joint Management Councils, introduced in 1958 on the recommendations of the study made in the Second Plan period, and the two-tier scheme of Shop Councils at shop or departmental level and Joint Councils at plant level framed on 30 October 1975 for manufacturing and mining undertakings employing five hundred or more workers. A Bill of 1990 to provide a comprehensive three-tier statutory scheme did not become law, which is why the subject in India remains largely a matter of schemes rather than of rights.

Key facts

• Works Committee: section 3, Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 — establishments with 100 or more workmen employed on any day in the preceding twelve months, on the appropriate Government’s order.
• The workmen’s representatives on a Works Committee may not be fewer than the employer’s, and are chosen in consultation with the registered trade union.
• Section 3(2) makes the Works Committee’s duty to promote amity and good relations and to compose material differences of opinion.
• Safety Committee: section 41G, Factories Act, 1948, whose marginal heading is ‘Workers’ participation in safety management’ — equal numbers of workers’ and management representatives, in factories with hazardous processes or substances.
• Canteen managing committee: section 46(2)(d), Factories Act, 1948 — rules may provide for its constitution and for representation of the workers in the management of the canteen; canteens are required where more than 250 workers are ordinarily employed.
• Article 43A, inserted by the Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act, 1976, directs the State to secure participation of workers in the management of undertakings.
• Joint Management Councils were introduced in 1958; the two-tier scheme of Shop Councils and Joint Councils was framed on 30 October 1975 for undertakings employing 500 or more workers.
• The Bill of 1990 for a comprehensive statutory scheme of workers’ participation did not become law.

Common traps

• Treating education, welfare and participation as the same idea. Each has its own institutions and its own statutory basis.
• Confusing a Works Committee with a trade union. The committee is a joint body inside one establishment; the union is an organisation of workmen registered under the Trade Unions Act, 1926.
• Confusing a Works Committee with a Board of Conciliation. The Works Committee promotes amity; the Board is machinery for settling a dispute that has already arisen.
• Assuming every establishment must have a Works Committee. It is required only on the appropriate Government’s order, and only where one hundred or more workmen are employed.
• Reading a suggestion scheme as participation. It is individual, creates no joint body and confers no right to be consulted.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  A Works Committee under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 may be required to be constituted in an industrial establishment employing

  • (a)fifty or more workmen
  • (b)one hundred or more workmen
  • (c)two hundred or more workmen
  • (d)three hundred or more workmen

  Answer(b) one hundred or more workmen

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under section 41G of the Factories Act, 1948, a Safety Committee is required to be set up in

  • (a)every factory employing more than 250 workers
  • (b)every factory where a hazardous process takes place or hazardous substances are used or handled
  • (c)every factory using power and employing ten or more workers
  • (d)every factory in respect of which standing orders have been certified

  Answer(b) every factory where a hazardous process takes place or hazardous substances are used or handled