<\/a>When standing orders apply: the 300-worker threshold<\/h2>\nStanding orders under the Industrial Relations Code apply to every industrial establishment in which 300 or more workers are employed, or were employed on any day of the preceding twelve months, under Section 28. That single number decides whether the whole of Chapter IV switches on. Below it, an establishment has no statutory duty to certify standing orders under the Code, though it will usually still owe service-condition protections under other law. At or above it, the duty to prepare, certify and follow standing orders is mandatory.<\/p>\n
The twelve-month look-back is easy to overlook and important. The threshold is not tested only on the day the employer happens to check; it is met if the establishment touched 300 workers on any day in the previous year. So a firm that briefly scaled up for a seasonal peak, then fell back, can still be inside Chapter IV, and an employer counting only its current headcount can misjudge its position.<\/p>\n
The 300-worker test under Section 28<\/h3>\n The trigger in Section 28(1) is 300 or more workers, and this is a deliberate rise from the past. Under the 1946 Act the duty began at 100 workers, and several states had lowered it further to 50, so a large band of mid-sized establishments was covered. By setting the figure at 300, the Code removes that duty from establishments with between 100 and 299 workers, which no longer have to certify standing orders under this Chapter at all.<\/p>\n
The policy behind the higher number is the same size logic that runs through the Code: heavier process for the largest employers, a lighter touch for smaller ones. Whether 300 is the right line is a genuine policy debate, because it takes a substantial number of medium establishments outside a discipline that used to reach them. For an employer, though, the practical task is only to count correctly, remembering the preceding-twelve-months rule, and then to act on the answer.<\/p>\n
Who is left out: exclusions and the mid-sized band<\/h3>\n Not every worker in a large establishment brings it within Chapter IV. Section 28(2) carves out establishments in so far as the workers are governed by the Fundamental and Supplementary Rules, the Civil Services (Classification, Control and Appeal) Rules, the Civil Services (Temporary Service) Rules, the Revised Leave Rules, the Civil Service Regulations, the Civilians in Defence Service (Classification, Control and Appeal) Rules, the Indian Railway Establishment Code, or other rules notified by the appropriate Government. Where those service rules already govern the workforce, the Chapter does not apply on top of them.<\/p>\n
The other group left out is the mid-sized private establishment. A factory or service establishment with, say, 180 workers is now outside the certified-standing-orders regime that would have covered it under the old 100-worker threshold. Such an employer should not read that as a licence to leave conditions of service undocumented, because contractual terms, the appointment letter, and other labour codes still bind it; it simply does not go through the Chapter IV certification machinery.<\/p>\n
Establishments already covered under the 1946 Act<\/h3>\n An establishment that already had certified standing orders under the 1946 Act does not start from a blank page. Section 30(11) preserves existing standing orders: those in force on the commencement of the relevant provisions continue, so far as they are not inconsistent with the Code, and are deemed to be standing orders certified under the Code. So a large employer that certified its rulebook years ago is not required to re-certify from scratch, only to align anything that now conflicts with the Code.<\/p>\n
That saving keeps decades of settled workplace rules alive and avoids a cliff-edge on 21 November 2025. The practical task for such an employer is a gap check: read the existing certified standing orders against the Code and the Model Standing Orders, 2026, and move to modify only the clauses that are now out of step, for example on fixed-term employment or on the subsistence-allowance rates that the Code fixes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n