The Labour Courts, the Director of Labour, Trade Unions and Workplace Committees: What an Employer Faces after the 2025 Ordinance and the 2026 Act

In this guide: The Labour Courts: jurisdiction, procedure and time limits · Appeals, the Tribunal and the new ADR Authority · The Director of Labour and unfair labour practices · Trade union registration and collective bargaining after the amendments · Strikes, lock-outs and industrial disputes · Participation, safety and complaint committees

The short answer

Three things to settle before any dispute arrives. The committees. At fifty workers, a participation committee elected or nominated under the Rules, meeting every two months with minutes; in a factory, a safety committee under Rules 81 to 84; from the Ordinance, a complaint committee for harassment under s.332. An employer without them starts every Labour Court case explaining why. The union position. A union application now needs twenty members in an establishment of up to three hundred; the Director of Labour must register or object within 55 days; obstruction, dismissal of organisers, blacklisting, sponsoring a rival union or paying members to leave are unfair labour practices under s.195 that the Director can now act on directly, so the lawful response to an application is to prepare for bargaining, not to prevent it. The file. Every s.33 complaint is decided on the appointment letter, the service book, the charge-sheet and enquiry record, the settlement statement and the proof of service; an employer who has them wins the cases it should and settles the rest cheaply. The sections below cover the Labour Court procedure and time limits, the Tribunal, the Director of Labour’s new orders, union registration and collective bargaining, strikes and lock-outs, and the committees; our termination guide has the paper for the commonest case, and the employer’s guide to the Act the amended thresholds.

The Labour Courts: jurisdiction, procedure and time limits

The court (s.214) is constituted by a chairman who is a district or additional district judge and two members, one from the employer panel and one from the worker panel, whose absence does not invalidate proceedings; it has the powers of a civil court for evidence and of a magistrate for offences (s.216). Procedure is summary in form but follows the Code of Civil Procedure in practice: written statement, framing of issues, evidence on affidavit with cross-examination, argument, judgment. The sixty-day disposal targets are routinely exceeded; an s.33 case takes a year or more in Dhaka. Interim relief is limited; the court can stay a dismissal pending hearing in some cases and routinely orders the employer to pay wages pending appeal where reinstatement is ordered. The Supreme Court’s writ jurisdiction is not an alternative to the statutory appeal, though it is invoked against Tribunal decisions on jurisdictional grounds.

Appeals, the Tribunal and the new ADR Authority

The Labour Appellate Tribunal (s.218) sits in Dhaka with a chairman who is or has been a judge of the Supreme Court and such members as the Government appoints; an appeal from a Labour Court judgment or award lies within 60 days under s.217 (30 days for s.33 complaints under that section’s own clock, as read); the Tribunal may confirm, set aside, vary or modify, or remand, and is to dispose within 60 days; its decision is final. There is no second appeal; the writ jurisdiction of the High Court Division is available on jurisdictional error and natural justice, and employers use it, but it does not reopen facts. Execution of a Labour Court decree for money is through the court itself as a decree of a civil court or as a public demand. The 2025 Ordinance added s.348C, an Alternative Dispute Resolution Authority offering conciliation and arbitration in labour matters with binding awards, intended to take individual and collective disputes out of the court queue; its rules and the extent to which an award is appealable were not available at the date above, and employers should ask before agreeing to arbitration whether the award can be challenged. Section 348B constitutes a National Social Dialogue Forum of government, employers and workers to oversee sectoral bargaining and policy; it is reported to have been constituted by gazette in August 2026. Neither replaces the Labour Court for a s.33 complaint, which remains the worker’s statutory route.

The Director of Labour and unfair labour practices

Chapter XIII gives the Director of Labour (Department of Labour) three roles that matter to an employer. Registration. On an application under s.177 with the constitution, the list of officers and the members’ signatures, the Director must register the union within 55 days or communicate objections (s.182); the union may appeal a refusal to the Labour Court. The Director also maintains the register, cancels registration on the grounds in s.190 (with Labour Court permission) and receives the union’s annual returns. Collective bargaining agent. Where there is one union it is the CBA; where more than one, the Director holds a secret ballot on the application of a union or the employer and certifies the winner for two years (s.202); the CBA alone may raise industrial disputes, strike, and bargain, and the employer deals with it on the matters listed in s.202(24). Unfair labour practices. Section 195 lists the employer’s: imposing conditions that restrain union membership, refusing to employ or discriminating on union grounds, dismissing or threatening a worker for union activity, inducing a worker to leave a union, interfering in a union or financing it, recruiting during a lawful strike, and, since the Ordinance, blacklisting, forming or sponsoring a “yellow” union and paying workers to withdraw from a union. The new ss.196A and 196B let the Director, on complaint and after hearing, order the employer to cease the practice, reinstate or compensate the worker, without a Labour Court; non-compliance is an offence under s.291 with a fine reported at Tk 50,000 to 1 lakh. The Director’s order is challengeable before the Labour Court, but the burden has shifted: the employer who dismisses a union organiser the week after an application now explains itself to the Director first.

Trade union registration and collective bargaining after the amendments

In practice: a union application in a factory of 250 workers needs twenty signatures and a constitution; the employer is not a party to registration and is not consulted; once registered the union may demand a participation in the committees, display notices, collect subscriptions and raise disputes; an employer with two or three registered unions should expect a CBA election within months. The Act does not require the employer to recognise a non-CBA union for bargaining, but it does forbid discrimination against its members. Group-of-establishments registration counts the group’s workers together. EPZ enterprises are outside Chapter XIII; their workers form Workers’ Welfare Associations under the EPZ Labour Act 2019, with BEPZA as registrar.

Strikes, lock-outs and industrial disputes

An industrial dispute under s.209 begins with a written demand by the CBA or the employer and bipartite negotiation; if that fails within the period the Act allows, either party reports it to the Conciliator, who conciliates for 30 days (extendable by agreement); if conciliation fails the parties may refer the dispute to an arbitrator by consent, or the CBA may give notice of strike or the employer of lock-out (s.211), or either may apply to the Labour Court. A strike requires a secret ballot in which two-thirds of the CBA’s members vote for it, fourteen days’ notice, and may not begin before conciliation has failed; no strike or lock-out is permitted in an establishment for three years from its commencement of production, or in public utility services without the Government’s permission, and the Government may prohibit a strike or lock-out lasting more than thirty days or affecting the national interest and refer the dispute to the Labour Court (s.211(3)–(4)). An illegal strike exposes the union to cancellation and the workers to disciplinary action for the s.23(4) misconduct of participating in it; an illegal lock-out exposes the employer to prosecution under s.294 and to wages for the period. During a lawful strike the employer may not recruit new workers in place of strikers (s.195). The practical point for an employer is that the strikes that cause damage are the unlawful ones that bypass the CBA, and the remedy for those is the Labour Court’s injunction and the s.23 process against identified participants after the event, not the police during it; the 2025 Ordinance’s new s.345A–C anti-discrimination and s.332 complaint provisions mean that mass action is now also examined for the grievance behind it.

Participation, safety and complaint committees

The committees are also evidence. A participation committee that met, minuted a grievance and recorded the employer’s response is the best answer to a later s.33 complaint that the worker was never heard; a safety committee’s inspection record is the employer’s defence in a Chapter XII claim and a buyer audit; a complaint committee’s file is what the Labour Court reads in a harassment-related dismissal. An employer who treats them as a formality finds they are the first thing the inspector, the auditor and the court ask about. We constitute and train them, draft the terms of reference and the minute templates, and sit in on the first meetings where clients want it.