MANAGEMENT OF PIONEER KOTHALAMPALLAM ESTATE, THADIYUR KONAM, NAGERCOIL Vs. WORKMEN OF THE PIONEER KOTHALAMPALLAM ESTATE AND ANOTHER

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The management of Kothalampallam Estate, Nagercoil, questions the legality of the award of the Labour Court, Madurai, dated 24-9-1970, which held that the non-employment of P. Issac was not justified and that he was entitled to be reinstated with wages for the period for which he was not employed.

(2.) Mr. Padmanabhan, the learned counsel for the petitioner, argued that the first respondent, Workmen of the Pioneer Kothalampallam Estate by the Secretary, Estate Staff Union of South India, Coimbatore, was not representative in character, in the sense that the workmen belonging to the petitioner management were not members of the first respondent union, that therefore the first respondent lacked the representative character and that therefore the support of the first respondent would not make the dispute between the petitioner and Issac an industrial dispute. The first respondent raised an industrial dispute which was the subject-matter of the reference under Section 10 of the Industrial Disputes Act, to the Government of Tamil Nadu. The relevant notification is extracted here below :

(3.) Before the Labour Court the petitioner averred that the dispute referred to for adjudication was between the workman and the petitioner, that the claim statement should be filed only by Isaac or by the representatives who had been duly authorised to represent him under Section 36 of the Act, that the claim statement was filed by the first respondent who was not competent to raise any dispute in regard to the non-employment of Isaac, that the dispute referred to for adjudication was only an individual dispute, that Section 2-A of the Act was not invoked in the present case and that the dispute in issue was a collective dispute coming within the purview of the Act.