Dear friend,
I would like to reiterate my stand on your demand for supply of the copy of note file of the conciliation officer. Pl try to understand that note file is not the minutes of the meeting. It is just a brief noting done by the officer to remind himself of the stage/progress of each meeting held in order to move forward. Just for the sake of keeping record of the attendance of the parties only they are asked to sign the note file. For example the demand of the union mentioned in the dispute might be 50% hike in all the components of the wage scale. In the counter statement, the management might have mentioned that they cannot even consider the demand in view of the continued losses incurred by them since signing the previous settlement. After some rounds of discussion, the union might have scaled down to a hike of 25% and the management would have come up with 10% and the bargaining might continue in a similar fashion each party relaxing their stands according to the new offer from the other. However, suddenly, some additional issues would have come up and the management might refuse totally to discuss them then and thus a dead lock would have arisen and both might insist on the submission of the failure report reverting back to their respective original stands. Thus, when the alternatives stand rejected for some reason or other, the original stands get automatically restored. Following conciliation failure, the next stage is adjudication. The adjudicator would decide the issues based on the justifications shown before him and in the overall interest of both the parties based of upon the connected legal provisions as well as judicial precedents in this regard. Thus, what all changes made as alternatives during the course of conciliation become not relevant during the later adjudication since certain demands might have been left out in the reference by the appropriate Government. The adjudicator cannot travel beyond the referred issues. Therefore, the conciliation officer is well within his jurisdiction to turn down the request for supply of copy of note file by any party.
It is for the parties to keep track of the conciliatory talks by maintaining their own notings.