SHAMSUDDIN Vs. STATE OF KERALA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner, the employer, is a sub-agent of the Standard Vacuum Oil Company in Quilon, and he terminated the employment o three workmen on October 3, 1956. On October 19, 1956, they enrolled themselves as members of a labour Union called "The Quilon Commercial Staff Association", hereafter referred to as the Union, which took up their cause and raised a dispute which was referred by the first respondent, the Government, of the State of Kerala, to the second respondent, the Industsial Tribunal, to be referred to as the Tribunal, as "the Industrial Dispute between the management of Standard Vacuum Oil Company, Sub-Agency, Quilon, represented by tile Sub-Agent, and the workmen of the above concern represented by the Quilon Commercial Staff Association". The reference concerned two issues, the first of which related to the termination o the employment of the three workmen and the second, to their claim for bonus, for the years 1953 to 1956. At an early stage of the proceedings before the Tribunal the workmen were allowed, at their request, to be represented by the Quilon Commercial and Industrial Employees' Association, of which the third respondent is the President, instead of by the Union. Though a ground was taken in this petition of this change in representation, no point was made of it before me, at the hearing. By the award, Ext. P-l the Tribunal has held, that the termination of employment was not justified, and allowed compensation to each of the workmen at rates specified, and also two months' bonus for the years 1954 and 1955 to two of them. This petition is under Article 226, and is to quash Ext. P1. Three grounds alone were pressed before me on behalf of the petitioner, firstly, that the finding in Ext. PI, that the employment was terminated without justifiable reason is perverse, secondly that there was no industrial dispute to be referred by the first respondent, as the three workmen, whose cause was espoused by the Union, became its members only after their employment had ceased, and thirdly, that no bonus was payable to any of the workmen.

(2.) The first concerned chiefly the interpretation of Exts. M2 and M14, two letters, which, in my opinion, is not conclusive; there was other evidence for the Tribunal to act upon, in coming to its conclusion. I therefore, decline to accept the first ground as valid. On the second, the learned Government Pleader who appeared for the first respondent and the Tribunal, took a preliminary objection, that by the failure of the petitioner to object before the Tribunal to its jurisdiction, he is now precluded from doing so. The petitioner has filed a supplementary affidavit explaining, that "it was only after proceedings before the Tribunal were completed, that I (the petitioner) got definite information, that the three workers were not members of any trade union at the time of the dispute or the discharge", and his learned counsel contended, that the petitioner was even misled by Ext. M4, a communication addressed by the Union, referring to these workmen as its members. The allegation in the affidavit in reply is but a bare denial of the lack of knowledge of the petitioner pleaded by him. Far from asserting in it, that they were in fact members of the Union the hearing of this case was itself proceeded with as if they were not members at the time their employment was terminated. In this view, the objection as to jurisdiction must be regarded as available to the petitioner.

(3.) This objection was developed before me in the following manner. Notwithstanding the definition of 'industrial dispute' in Section 2(k) of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, referred to hereinafter as the Act, it may now be taken as settled law, that an individual dispute between an employer and a workman, is not per se an industrial dispute, but may develop into one, if it is taken up by the labour Union of which the workman is a member, or by the body of the remaining workmen in the establishment, but that in order to ensure this result, it is an essential condition, that the workman must have been a member of the Union on the date on which the individual dispute had its origin, or in the case of workmen who make common cause with him, they are not themselves involved in such individual disputes with their em- ployer. The learned Government Pleader agreed with the first part of the above proposition, but maintained, that there is no reason or principle for introducing into it the condition of antecedent membership, or the qualifying test, as it were, for other workmen to espouse the cause of the individual workman previously affected. It is therefore necessary to ascertain the principle on which, the rule of transformation of an individual dispute into an industrial dispute in the above manner has been evolved. The object of the Act is to prevent industrial strife and unrest, and to promote measures for securing and preserving good relations between employer and employees, and is not to Substitute a new procedure, or to supplant the established or ordinary tribunal in the land, for the enforcement of rights, contractual or otherwise, of individual workman. Where individual rights of a workman are violated or are in jeopardy recourse should be had to the ordinary law of the land for resolving the dispute that arises therefrom, but when a Union or a body of workmen, having a recognized nexus with such dispute, takes up his cause against his employer, the dispute sheds its individual characteristics and assumes those of a collective dispute based on a policy of collective bargaining, by a body of men acting together, to which a different code of procedure and principles, governing industrial relations, is applicable.