M RATNASWAMI MUDALIAR Vs. STATE OF TAMIL NADU

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE petitioners in these six cases are owners of weaving concerns in Karur. They have put up thatched sheds, where they have installed a certain number of handlooms. Of these, towels and bed-sheets are manufactured by casual pieceworkers who go there. The staff in each of these establishments consists of only two clerks and a Mistry, who alone constitute the permanent members. The residents of the neighbourhood, when they have time and feel inclined to do so, go to these sheds at whatever hour they like, when the work is in operation there, and are supplied with the yarn by the owners of these sheds, if they like, arid work on the looms as they fall vacant. This yarn they weave into towels and bed-sheets for which they are paid at certain, rates. When they spoil the cloth, they are fined, and the fines are deducted out of the amounts due to them for the cloth woven by them. The principal occupation of the residents of Karur is agriculture. But weaving is also a well-known industry of the place, and many agriculturists are well versed in it, and take to it as a spare-time occupation.

(2.) THE evidence on record clearly shows that these irregular piece workers go to the sheds when they like, leave the sheds when they like, and even when in the sheds can work fast or go slow as they like and leave for days together as they like, without taking any permission, and go back after several davs of absence, without limitation as they like, arid that the owner of the sheds was also not bound to give them work as soon as they went, or question their absence, or as to why they did not work on particular days, or direct them to work on towels rather than on hedsheets or vice versa, or direct them to make a particular kind of towel or bed-sheet he wants. There are a hundred such establishments in Karur employing more than 20 persons daily though the twenty persons would differ almost every day, because of the facts above mentioned, All of them use only hand-looms and no power.

(3.) THEY were all forced to register these as factories, despite their protests, and to take out licences under the Factories Act. Their contention all along was that they were not factories, and thaf the persons working in their premises would not be workers within the definition contained in the Factories Act, and that they were not, therefore, bound to maintain a muster roll in the prescribed form No. 79. or to conform to the requirements of the Payment of Wages Act, or of the Madras maternity Benefit Rules. Since they had taken out licences under the Factories Act, they were all prosecuted when thev failed to keep the prescribed registers. There have been three batches of prosecutions till now.