Standing orders are the written conditions of service for an industrial establishment: how workers are classified, how shifts, leave and attendance work, and what counts as misconduct. Chapter IV of the Industrial Relations Code 2020 requires them from 300 workers. An employer either adopts the Model Standing Orders 2026, notified on 8 May 2026, or certifies its own. Until it does, the model orders apply by default.
Who needs standing orders
Every industrial establishment where 300 or more workers are employed, or were employed on any day of the preceding twelve months (s.28(1)). The Industrial Employment (Standing Orders) Act 1946, which the Code replaced, applied from 100 [VERIFY: s.1(3) of the 1946 Act; not re-read for this piece]. The chapter does not apply to workers covered by government service rules (s.28(2)), and the appropriate government can exempt an establishment or class of establishments (s.39).
Two transitional rules matter for an established site. Standing orders already certified under the old law continue as if certified under the Code, so far as they are consistent with it (s.30(11)). And from the day the chapter applies until the site's own standing orders come into operation, the Model Standing Orders are deemed adopted (s.29(2)). There is no period with no standing orders at all.
Two routes: adopt the model, or certify your own
The Model Standing Orders 2026, S.O. 2312(E), set out separate schedules for the mining (Schedule A), manufacturing (Schedule B) and service (Schedule C) sectors, and rule 10 of the Industrial Relations (Central) Rules 2026 adopts them for the purposes of the Code.
| Adopt the Model Standing Orders | Certify the site's own | |
|---|---|---|
| What the employer does | Tells the certifying officer the date from which it has adopted them (IR Central rules, r.10) | Drafts standing orders based on the model and covering every First Schedule item, consults the unions, and submits the draft (s.30(1)–(2)) |
| What the officer does | May direct additions within 30 days if the site's activities go beyond the model; the site complies within 30 days | Notifies the unions or chosen worker representatives, who have 15 days to comment, hears them, and decides (s.30(5); r.11) |
| When it is settled | Deemed certified if the officer raises nothing within 30 days | Deemed certified if the officer has not decided within 60 days (s.30(5) proviso) |
| When it takes effect | From the date the employer specified | 30 days after authenticated copies are sent, or 7 days after an appeal is decided (s.33(1)) |
| Scope | All units of the establishment | As certified |
Either party can appeal a certifying officer's order within 60 days (s.32). Once in force, standing orders cannot be modified for six months except by agreement (s.35(1)); after that, the employer, a worker or a union can apply to modify them through the same procedure (s.35(2)). A dispute over what a certified standing order means goes to the Tribunal (s.37), and oral evidence cannot be used to vary it in court (s.36).
What they must cover
Every matter in the First Schedule to the Code that applies to the establishment (s.30(6)):
- Classification of workers: permanent, temporary, apprentices, probationers, badlis or fixed term.
- How workers are told periods and hours of work, holidays, pay-days and wage rates.
- Shift working.
- Attendance and late coming.
- Leave and holidays: conditions, procedure and the authority that grants them.
- Entry by specified gates, and liability to search.
- Closing and reporting of sections, temporary stoppages, and the resulting rights and liabilities.
- Termination of employment, and the notice each side gives.
- Suspension or dismissal for misconduct, and what counts as misconduct.
- Means of redress against unfair treatment or wrongful exactions.
- Any other matter the appropriate government notifies.
The manufacturing schedule of the Model Standing Orders adds a seventh class, casual workers, and fills in the detail. Probation runs six months, extendable by three on assessment. A badli, who substitutes for an absent permanent worker, stops being a badli after a year's continuous service or 240 attendances in the same or a similar post. A fixed-term worker gets the hours, wages and benefits of a permanent worker doing similar work, statutory benefits pro rata, and gratuity after one year. Every worker is issued an identity badge or card.
Section 38 adds a rule every set of standing orders must carry. An inquiry into misconduct should ordinarily finish within 90 days of suspension, and a suspended worker is paid subsistence allowance at 50% of wages for the first 90 days and 75% after that, unless the delay is the worker's own doing.
Where contract labour fits
Not in the site's own standing orders, on the face of them. None of the seven classes in the Model Standing Orders is contract labour, and section 2(m)(iii) of the Code lists the contractor among the persons who count as employer. A contractor's crew works under its own employer's conditions of service, which are the contractor's standing orders if the contractor's establishment is itself within the chapter.
Two questions are left open. Section 28(1) counts workers "employed" in the industrial establishment, and the Code does not say whether a contractor's crew on the site's floor counts toward the site's 300. And some First Schedule matters, such as entry by specified gates and liability to search, are site rules that apply in practice to everyone on the premises; a site usually extends them to contract labour through its contract with the contractor rather than through its standing orders. How both apply to a particular site is for its counsel.
A Tamil Nadu factory or warehouse deals with the State's certifying officer, under the State's own IR rules, but the Model Standing Orders are the Central Government's under section 29 and serve as the reference for both routes [VERIFY: Tamil Nadu's IR rules on adoption and certification procedure].
How Velura Services helps
We align our crews' conduct rules with your standing orders and brief every worker on them at induction. Where your standing orders need to address contract labour, we work through the wording with your HR team before deployment.
Sources
- Industrial Relations Code, 2020 (Act 35 of 2020), Gazette of India Extraordinary, 29 September 2020 — s.2(m) (employer includes contractor), ss.28–39 (standing orders: application, model standing orders, certification, appeals, operation, modification, interpretation, subsistence allowance, exemption), First Schedule. Opened and read.
- Industrial Relations (Central) Rules, 2026, Gazette of India, 8 May 2026 — r.10 (Model Standing Orders; adoption and deemed certification), r.11 (workers' representatives; fifteen days to comment), r.12 (authentication), r.13 (statement with the draft). Opened and read.
- Model Standing Orders, 2026, S.O. 2312(E) dated 8 May 2026 — Schedule B (manufacturing sector): order 2 (classification of workers, probation, badli, fixed term, casual), order 3 (identity card). Opened and read from a mirrored copy of the Gazette [VERIFY: against the e-Gazette original].