WORKMEN OF THE BHARAT PETROLEUM CORPORATION LIMITED REFINING DIVISION BOMBAY Vs. BHARAT PETROLEUM CORPORATION LIMITED

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The workmen of the Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited, Bombay raised an Industrial dispute with regard to the retirement age of the clerical staff employed in the Refinery Divison of the Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited at Bombay. The demand of the workmen was that the retirement age of the clerical staff of the Refinery Division at Bombay must be raised from 55 years to 60 years in keeping with the 'trend' in the Bombay region. The Company resisted the demand on the ground that in all similar oil companies the retirement age of the clerical staff engaged in the Refinery Division had never been fixed at 60 years. Before the Industrial Tribunal, Maharashtra at Bombay to whom the dispute was referred for adjudication, neither party led any oral evidence. The workmen relied upon several decisions of this court to establish that the trend of industry in Bombay was to fix the retirement age of the clerical staff at 60 years, while the company contented itself by filing a statement showing the age of retirement of clerical staff employed in various oil companies. The Industrial Tribunal found as a fact that the wage scales of the company were not much better than the wage scales of other comparable concerns. The Industrial Tribunal also noticed that the age of retirement of the clerical staff of the company in its Marketing Division both at Bombay and other places was fixed at 58 years. The Industrial Tribunal, therefore, held that there was no valid reason why the retirement age of the clerical staff employed in the Refinery Division should not be raised at least to 58 years. But having regard to the circumstance that the clerical staff employed in the Refinery Division had already been granted, under a settlement, the benefits of Provident Fund and Gratuity and having further regard to the fact that while the number of members of the clerical staff employed in the Refinery Division was 148 only, there were as many as 1095 workmen in the non-clerical category, who would also surely raise a dispute to revise their retirement age, the Industrial Tribunal thought that in the interest of industrial harmony, it would be proper to raise the retirement age of the clerical staff to 58 years only and not to 60 years. The workmen have preferred this appeal under Art. 136 of the Constitution. As before the Industrial Tribunal, so too before us, the workmen relied on the 'trend' in the Bombay region while the company relied on the position in other oil companies.

(2.) In fixing the age of retirement, several factors have to be taken into consideration. These factors have been explained at length in Guest, Keen Williams Private Ltd. v. P. J. Sterling (1960) 1 SCR 348, Dunlop Rubber Company Limited v. Workmen, (1960) 2 SCR 51, Imperial Chemical Industries (India) Pvt. Ltd. v. Workmen, (1961) 2 SCR 349, British Paints (India) Ltd, v. Its Workmen, (1966) 2 SCR 523, G. M. Talang v. Shaw Wallace and Co., (1964) 7 SCR 424 and Burmah Shell Oil Storage and Distributing Company of India Ltd. v. Their Workmen, (1970) 1 Lab LJ 363 (SC).

(3.) Guest, Keen, Williams Private Ltd. v. P. J. Sterling, AIR 1959 SC 1279) was a case from Calcutta and it may not be useful to discover the trend in the Bombay region. However, some of the relevant factors to be taken into account in fixing the age of superannuation have been stated and we may usefully extract the observations made by the learned judges in that case. It was said :