INDIAN HUME PIPE COMPANY LIMITED Vs. ITS WORKMEN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) AN industrial dispute in regard to the revision of the wage-structure which was raised against the appellant, the Indian Hume Pipe Company, Ltd., by the respondents, its workmen, was referred for adjudication by the Government of Bombay under S.12(5) of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 (hereinafter called the Act), on 30 October, 1956. On this reference, an award was made on 22 July, 1960. This award is challenged by the appellant in its Appeal No. 669 of 1962 which has been brought to this Court by special leave. After the award was pronounced, the appellant applied under rule 31 of the rules framed under the Act for correction of certain clerical errors on 16 September, 1960. The tribunal held that the applications was incompetent under rule 31 and so the said application was dismissed on 26 April, 1961. Against this order of dismissal, the appellant has become to this Court by special leave in Appeal No. 670 of 1962. Since the appellant is challenging the award on the grounds which it had set forth in its application under rule 31, it is unnecessary to deal with its Appeal No. 670 of 1962. Our decision in Appeal No. 669 of 1962 will automatically govern the decision in Appeal No. 670 of 1962.

(2.) THE appellant is a public limited company incorporated under the Indian Companies Act, 1913. It carries on the business of manufacturing and selling Hume pipe and allied products and owns as many as 57 factories in India, including the factory at Wadala, Bombay. The respondents are the daily-rated workmen employed by the appellant at its factory at Wadala. It appears that in 1950 the respondents made various demands on the appellant and the same were referred for adjudication by the Government of Bombay on 29 May, 1950. Amongst the demands made by the respondents was included a demand for wages. The respondents had claimed that the occupations of the employees of the appellant should be classified into four categories, viz., unskilled, semi-skilled, skilled and highly skilled. The industrial tribunal, which heard the said dispute, decided that there should be only three categories of the employees, viz., unskilled, semi-skilled and skilled. It came to the conclusion that in regard to employees who claimed to be skilled in the higher degree, provision should be made for giving them adequately high salaries. In fact, the categorization of the employees into three categories was substantially achieved by consent between the parties. Consistently with the said classification, wage-structure was devised by the industrial tribunal and ultimately its award was pronounced on 21 August 1951.Subsequently, in 1956, the respondents made a fresh demand in respect of the wage-structure and contended that the wage-structure needed drastic revision, having regard to the fact that the cost of living had increased in the meanwhile. By demand 1 the respondents set out the manner in which the wage-structure should be revised and they specified eight categories of employees in that behalf. As we have already indicated, on the earlier occasion the parties had agreed that the respondents should be classified into three categories and had further consented to the inclusion of 12 categories in classification A, 22 categories in classification B and 13 categories in classification C, classification A, B, and C being unskilled, semi-skilled and skilled respondents. Even so, in 1956 the respondents seemed to demand that the said classifications should be revised and the wage up-graded.

(3.) SRI Sowani for the respondents attempted to argue that the tribunal has created a category of assistants, and so, it thought that it would be anomalous to treat an assistant mason, an assistant welder, an assistant carpenter or an assistant moulder as semi-skilled, and the mason, the welder, the carpenter and the moulder also as semi-skilled. That may perhaps explain why the tribunal changed the classification in respect of the four categories of employees. In the present appeal, no grievance is made by the appellant in regard to the creation of certain assistant in the category of semi-skilled employees, and so, we are not called upon to consider whether the tribunal could have created this class of assistants, but it seems to us that the tribunal was not justified in promoting the four categories of employees into the skilled class in a manner which was inconsistent with the classification adopted by the earlier award. That is why we must hold that in regard to the mason, the welder the carpenter and the moulder, the classification must be deemed to be the same as was adopted by the earlier award. In regard to the assistant moulder, the appellant's grievance is that there is no person who answers the description of that office. We propose to express no opinion on this part of the appellant's case. If there are employees who can be regarded as assistant moulders under the award, their rights will not be affected, because the appellant has not seriously contended that the tribunal was not competent to create a class of assistant moulders, just as it has not been argued that a class of assistant masons, assistant fitter and other assistants could not have been created.In the result, the appeal is allowed and the classification adopted by the tribunal in respect of the mason, the welder, the carpenter and the moulder is set aside and it its place is substituted the classification adopted by the earlier award (annexure A). Under the circumstances of this case, there would be no order as to costs.