The Industrial Relations Code, 2020 consolidates the Trade Unions Act 1926, the Industrial Employment (Standing Orders) Act 1946 and the Industrial Disputes Act 1947 into a single instrument. Three substantive shifts — fixed-term employment recognition, the universal 60-day strike notice, and the 300-worker layoff threshold — redraw India's labour-flexibility map. A practitioner's read on the architecture, the open Rules questions, and the old-law jurisprudence that continues to govern.
On 28 August 1985, a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court read Section 2(oo) of the Industrial Disputes Act with the breadth its language demands — every termination by the employer is retrenchment unless it falls within one of the enumerated exceptions.