Twenty workers and section 4 of the Industrial Relations Code makes you have one. No government order, no notification, no minimum turnover. This pack is the policy, the resolution that constitutes the committee, and ten formats, built from the Code and the 2026 rules rather than from other templates.
Ten formats, from the policy to the register that proves you ran it.
A grievance redressal policy in seventeen clauses, and the minute that actually constitutes the committee, with the equal numbers, the women proportion and the three year term on the record. Adopt one, pass the other, and the first duty is done.
Rule 7(1) fixes ten particulars and prescribes no form to put them on. Format 04 carries all ten, including the ones people forget: worker code or token number, length of service in years, and the category of worker as the job description records it.
Section 4(7) needs two things, not one: a majority, and the agreement of more than half of the members representing the workers. Format 07 records them separately, because a four to two decision carried entirely by the employer side is deemed to be no decision.
One year to apply, thirty days to decide, sixty days to escalate, forty-five more to the Tribunal and a two year longstop. The register carries every date, so a grievance about unpaid overtime can be followed end to end.
Not your headcount. Section 2(zr) leaves out managers, administrative staff, supervisors on wages above ₹18,000 a month and apprentices engaged under the Apprentices Act, 1961. An establishment of twenty-four people can be under the line, and one of nineteen can be over it.
A day marked absent, an overtime hour not counted, a deduction nobody explained. Attendo keeps attendance, leave and payroll in one record.
Because it looks like the Works Committee, and the Works Committee waits for something. Section 3 needs one hundred workers and the appropriate Government to require it by general or special order, so an employer who has heard of bipartite forums reasonably assumes a letter will arrive first. Section 4 is not like that. It binds at twenty workers, of its own force, and nothing will ever arrive to start it off. It is also worth more than the trouble it costs. Section 40 stops an employer changing a Third Schedule condition of service without notice and twenty-one days, and its proviso lets an emergent change of shift working skip that entirely where the change is made in consultation with the Grievance Redressal Committee. An establishment that never constituted one has nobody to consult, and so cannot use the exception at all.
The second reason is that section 4 is unreadable on its own. It says the members shall be chosen in such manner as may be prescribed, and that an application may be made in such manner as may be prescribed, and stops. Until the Industrial Relations (Central) Rules, 2026 were published on 08-May-2026 there was no manner to follow. Rules 6, 7 and 8 are where the committee actually gets built, and they are the reason this pack could not have been written last year. Which rules, though, depends on who your appropriate Government is. Section 99 gives the rule-making power to that government, and section 2(b) makes it the Centre only for railways, mines, oil fields, major ports, air transport, telecommunication, banking, insurance and central public sector undertakings. For every other establishment it is the State, so a private factory or IT company reads its own State's rules for the manner. Section 4 binds you either way, because section 4 is in the Code and not in the rules.
The third is that the consequences arrive late and elsewhere. Section 4(9) deems a dispute about a discharge, dismissal, retrenchment or other termination of a worker to be an industrial dispute even though no other worker and no trade union is a party to it. So the committee an employer never constituted becomes visible at the worst possible moment, in the one category of dispute that reaches a Tribunal on a single worker's application.
And the fourth is a genuine gap in the Code that nobody has closed. Section 4(8) routes the escalation to the conciliation officer through the trade union of which the worker is a member. Section 4(9) then deems the dispute live although no trade union is a party. In an establishment with no union those two sentences pull in opposite directions and the rules do not settle it. The safe position for an employer is not to refuse an escalation on the ground that the worker has no union to route it through.
Two things this page does not say. It does not say the thirty days in section 4(6) is a deadline, because the Code says the committee may complete its proceedings in that time and attaches no penalty to missing it. And it does not say any form is prescribed for a grievance: the Schedule carries fifteen forms and none is made under rule 7. One more silence is worth knowing about before you constitute anything: section 4(3) says the chair alternates between the two sides every year but never says who selects it, and rule 6 has no chairperson provision at all. Rule 5 does, for the Works Committee, and gives it to the employer's nominee, so borrowing that would have an employer picking the worker side's chairperson in the alternating year. And nothing here says what your State has prescribed: this pack quotes the Central Government's rules, which bind the establishments in section 2(b)(i) and nobody else, so check your own State's rules under section 99 before relying on any procedure in it, alongside the rest of the codes.
Five steps, and every one of them is counted from something. The worker's rights run whether or not anybody has diarised them.
| Step | What happens | How long | Counted from | Who acts | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Worker applies to the committee | Within one year | The cause of action | Worker | s.4(5), r.7(3) |
| 2 | Committee may complete proceedings | Thirty days | Receipt of the application | Committee | s.4(6) |
| 3 | Decision, by majority and more than half the worker members | No period of its own | It falls inside the thirty days | Committee | s.4(7) |
| 4 | Application to the conciliation officer | Within sixty days | The decision, or the end of the thirty days | Worker | s.4(8), r.8 |
| 5 | Direct application to the Tribunal | After forty-five days | The conciliation application, and within two years of the termination | Worker | s.4(10), s.4(11) |
Where the duty starts, and it starts on its own. Section 4(1) says every industrial establishment employing twenty or more workers shall have one or more Grievance Redressal Committees. Nothing has to be ordered or notified first, which is what separates it from the Works Committee in section 3.
Source: Industrial Relations Code, 2020, s.4(1), against s.3(1) for the Works CommitteeEqual numbers representing the employer and the workers, and not more than ten in all, under rule 6(1). Its second proviso then fixes a floor for women: representation not less than the proportion of women workers to the total workers employed. That is arithmetic, not a target.
Source: IR (Central) Rules, 2026, rule 6(1) and 6(3), with s.4(4) of the CodeSection 4 carries no penalty of its own. The residual provision in section 86(20) covers contravention of any other provision of the Code or the rules, with a fine which may extend to one lakh rupees. Section 87(1) then lets a court take cognizance only on a complaint made by or under the authority of the appropriate Government.
Source: Industrial Relations Code, 2020, s.86(20), with s.87(1) on who may complainThat is the Works Committee under section 3, which needs one hundred workers and an order from the appropriate Government. Section 4 needs neither, and nothing will ever arrive to start the duty off.
Section 2(zr) leaves out managers, administrative staff and supervisors drawing wages above ₹18,000 a month, and excludes apprentices engaged under the Apprentices Act, 1961 by name. Wages there is basic pay, dearness allowance and retaining allowance, not gross pay, so testing a supervisor against the salary register means reading the right column.
Section 4(7) also requires that more than half of the members representing the workers agreed. A decision carried four to two by the employer side alone is deemed to be no decision, and the worker's sixty days start running as though nothing had been decided.
Section 4(6) says the committee may complete its proceedings within thirty days. No penalty attaches to missing it. What passing it does is open the worker's right to go to the conciliation officer, which is the consequence actually worth diarising.
Rule 5 sits on the page above rule 6 and gives the Works Committee office-bearers, quarterly meetings and a line in the unified annual return. None of it governs the Grievance Committee, and adopting it invents duties nobody imposed, the way a borrowed disciplinary procedure invents steps the standing orders never required.
The Internal Committee under the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 is constituted under a different statute, with a different composition, for one category of complaint. It is not a Grievance Redressal Committee and neither discharges the other. The same goes for a grievance about maternity benefit, which belongs to this committee.
A three step ladder and a mailbox
A policy, a resolution and ten formats
Attendo keeps attendance, leave and the balances they turn into money in one record.
Attendo (formerly Petpooja Payroll) is payroll and attendance software used by 40,000+ businesses across manufacturing, corporate offices, retail, hospitals and education. This template is one of the free HR downloads we publish, each built from the gazette rather than from other templates.
A policy, the resolution that constitutes the committee and ten formats, in editable Word. Free, and no card.
