Necessity of Consolidation of labour laws is the need of hour. Discuss in the context of the Code on Industrial Relations, 2020.

Labour law reforms are an ongoing and continuous process and the Government has been introducing new laws and amending the existing ones in response to the emerging needs of the workers in a constantly dynamic economic environment. The Second National Commission on Labour, which submitted its report in June, 2002 had recommended that the existing set of labour laws should be broadly amalgamated into the following groups, namely:- (a) industrial relations; (b) wages; (c) social security; (d) safety; and (e) welfare and working conditions. The Labour Code is a means to consolidate various statutes into a pruned and uncomplicated form. The amalgamated form of multiple statutes thus obtained is called a labour code. This operation is done with a view to have a unified law which can be understood and implemented with ease. Industrial Relations Code, 2020 is an Act to consolidate and amend the laws relating to Trade Unions, conditions of employment in industrial establishment or undertaking, investigation and settlement of industrial disputes. It amalgamates, simplifies and rationalises the relevant provisions of - (a) the Trade Unions Act, 1926; (b) the Industrial Employment (Standing Orders) Act, 1946; and (c) the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947. The important salient features of the Industrial Relations Code, 2020, inter alia, are as follows:- to provide for fixed term employment with the objective that the employee gets all the benefits like that of a permanent worker (including gratuity), except for notice period after conclusion of a fixed period, and retrenchment compensation. to bring concerted casual leave within the ambit of the definition of strike; to provide the maximum number of members in the Grievance Redressal Committee up to ten in an industrial establishment employing twenty or more workers. to provide for appeal against non-registration or cancellation of registration of Trade Union before the Industrial Tribunal; to empower the Central Government and the State Governments to recognise a Trade Union or a federation of Trade Unions as the Central Trade Union or State Trade Unions, respectively; to provide for applicability of threshold of three hundred or more workers for an industrial establishment to obtain certification of standing orders, if the standing order differ from the model standing order made by the Central Government; to set up Industrial Tribunals in the place of existing multiple adjudicating bodies like the Court of Inquiry, Board of Conciliation and Labour Courts; to remove the reference system for adjudication of Industrial Disputes, except the reference to the National Industrial Tribunal for adjudication; to provide that the commencement of conciliation proceedings shall be deemed to have commenced on the date of the first meeting held by the conciliation officer in an industrial dispute after the receipt of the notice of strike or lock-out by the conciliation officer; to prohibit strikes and lock-outs in all industrial establishments without giving notice of fourteen days; to provide for the obligation on the part of industrial establishments pertaining to mine, factories and plantation having three hundred or more workers to take prior permission of the appropriate Government before lay-off, retrenchment and closure with flexibility to the appropriate Government to increase the threshold to higher numbers, by notification; to set up a re-skilling fund for training of retrenched workers. to provide for penalties for different types of violations to rationalise with such offences and commensurate with the gravity of the violations; to empower the appropriate Government to exempt any industrial establishment from any of the provisions of the Code in the public interest for the specified period.