P A S PRESSMADRAS Vs. PRESIDING OFFICERLABOUR COURTMADRAS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) W. P. No. 142/58: The management is the petitioner in this petition which arises out of an award of an Industrial Tribunal. The petition is for the issue of a writ of certiorari to quash the order of the Labour court, Madras, D/- 3-2-1958, by which the gratuity has been directed to be paid to the respondent 2, Mr. G.V.N. Rao. The establishment in question is one which goes by the name of P. A. S. Press in Komaleswaranpet, Madras. By an industrial award which had been passed as the result of a settlement between the management and their workers, the workmen in this concern became entitled to gratuity on resignation or discharge. Subsequent to this consent award, G.V.N. Rao, the 2nd respondent, who was designated the manager of this Press, tendered his resignation on 10th July 1957, and this was accepted and he was relieved from office on 31st July 1957. On resignation he made a demand for the payment of gratuity in terms of this award. This was refused and thereafter Mr. Rao made an application under Section 33C of the Industrial Disputes Act to the labour court for a direction to the management to pay this sum. This claim was resisted by the management on the ground that Mr. Rao who was designated "the manager" of this concern was not a "workman" within the meaning of Section 2(s) of the Industrial Disputes Act. This definition, as now amended by Act, XXXVI of 1956, runs--to quote only the relevant words: "'Workman' means any person employed in any industry to do any skilled or unskilled, manual, supervisory, technical or clerical work, for hire or reward but does not include any person (i)..... ....(ii).....(iii) who is employed mainly in a managerial or administrative capacity; (iv) who being employed in a supervisory capacity, draws wages exceeding five hundred rupees per mensem or exercises, either by nature of the duties attached to the office, or by reason of the powers vested in him, functions mainly of a managerial nature."

(2.) In the counter affidavit filed by the management, the claim of Mr. Rao to gratuity was denied by relying on paras (iii) and (iv) of the exceptions which I have extracted.

(3.) At the stage of the enquiry before the labour court, the only evidence adduced was that of the "workman" Mr. Rao. In his chief-examination, he stated, "I was the manager of the respondent concern. 'But I was doing only clerical work. Myself and one Javasankar were the only two employees on the clerical side' and I was designated as manager and he was designated as the accountant" (Italicising (here in single quotation) mine). There was no cross-examination of this witness. Nor did the employer lead any evidence to show that the nature of the duties performed by Mr. Rao fell within the exceptions (iii) and (iv) or was any different from what he had stated in his chief examination. It was on this material that the Tribunal had to reach a finding as to whether or not the respondent 2 was a workman within the meaning of Section 2(s) of the Industrial Disputes Act. The Tribunal might properly have set out and referred to the terms of Section 2(s), proviso (iii), in its award and not have confined itself to negativing the applicability of exception (iv). But, in my opinion, this makes no difference because on the state of the evidence the Tribunal could not have reached any conclusion, other than that it did, namely, that the respondent 2 was a "workman" within the Industrial Disputes Act.