ASSOCIATED CEMENT CO LTD Vs. LABOUR INSPECTOR CENTRALCOIMBATORE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a petition for the issue of a writ of certiorari to call for the records in Minimum Wages Petition No. 26 of 1956 on the file of the Labour Court at Coimbatore and quash an order passed by that Tribunal dated 20-12-1957.

(2.) The Associated Cement Co. Ltd. carrying on the business of manufacturing cement at Madukkarai is the petitioner. The proceedings out of which this petition arises originated in an application under Section 20(2) of the Act filed by the Labour Inspector of the Central Government at Coimbatore before the Labour Court -- which is the authority constituted under Section 20(1) of the Minimum Wages Act, 1948 -- for a direction under Sub-section 3 of Section 20, on the allegation that the respondent there, the Associated Cement Co. Ltd., had paid less than the minimum rate of wages to certain of the company's employees.

(3.) The workmen to whom according to the Labour Inspector wages less than the minimum wages had been paid were those employed in lime stone quarries. The violation of the Minimum Wages Act and the rules made there under was stated to consist in failure to pay wages for the weekly holidays for the period March 195q to June 1956 to three employees whose names were set out in the annexure to the application. It was common ground that the application was filed as a test case, and that there was & very large number of other employees to whom also payments on the same basis had been made by the company.