TUKARAM PIRAJI Vs. MOTILAL POONA MILLS LTD

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is an application made by the employees of the Raja Bahadur Motilal Poona Mills, Ltd. , which is opponent No. 1, under Articles. 226 and 227 of the Constitution for a writ against the Labour Appellate Tribunal. It appears that on 29-8-1951, notice was given by opponent No. 1 Mills that weavers will be required to work on four looms instead of two looms. Pursuant to this notice, there was a cessation of work by the weavers from September 6. Opponent No. 1 Mills made an application to the Labour Court that the cessation of work by the weavers constituted an illegal strike, and the weavers on their part made an application to the Labour Court that the cessation of work constituted an illegal lock-out, and they also contended that no notice had been given of the change by the Mills as required by Section 42, Bombay Industrial Relations Act, and therefore the change made was an illegal change. Petitioner No. 1 is a weaver and petitioner No. 2 is the Poona Girni Kamgar Union. The Labour Court held that there was neither an illegal strike nor an illegal lock-out, but there was an illegal change brought about by the Mills. From this decision an appeal was preferred to the Labour Appellate Tribunal of India and the Labour Appellate Tribunal came to the conclusion that the cessation of work constituted an illegal strike. It is in respect of this order that this petition is preferred.

(2.) THE first contention urged by Mr. Phadke is that the Labour Appellate Tribunal had no jurisdiction to hear this appeal. The jurisdiction of the Labour Appellate Tribunal is to be found in Section 7 of Acticle 48 of 1950. That section provides: ''subject to the provisions of this section, an appeal shall lie to the Appellate Tribunal from any award or decision of an industrial tribunal if- -. . . . . and then various matters are set out which constitute the subject-matter of the appeal. Therefore, under Section 7 two conditions have got to be satisfied in order to confer jurisdiction upon the Appellate Tribunal. The first condition must be that the appeal must bo from an award or decision of an industrial tribunal, and the second condition is that the subject-matter of the appeal must fall in one of the clauses set out in Section 7. In this particular case the Appellate Tribunal entertained the appeal because it involved a substantial question of law, and there is no dispute before us that as far as the subject-matter was concerned the provisions of Section 7 were satisfied. But what is urged by Mr. Phadke before us is that the appeal was not from an industrial tribunal as defined in Section 2 (c), Acticle 43 of 1950. That Sub-section defines an industrial tribunal as " (i) any industrial tribunal constituted under the Industrial Disputes Act. " it is not the contention of opponent No. 1 Mills that this is an industrial tribunal as defined by clause (i) of Section 2 (c ). Clause (ii) of Section 2 (c) constitutes all appellate tribunals, where appellate tribunals have been set up by State legislation and to which appeals can be preferred from tribunals of first instance, as industrial tribunals. Therefore, under this clause if a Labour Court in a State gave a decision and an appeal lay to an appellate authority within the State, then that appellate authority would be an industrial tribunal for the purpose of this Act. Then comes clause (iii) which is the relevant clause which we have to consider:

(3.) THE ingenious argument advanced by Mr. Phadke is that clause (iii) of Section 2 (c) only deals with those cases where there is no appellate authority at all under a State labour law. In other words, Mr. Phadke's contention is that if there is an appellate authority, then a decision of that appellate authority is made appealable under this Sub-section, but if the State Legislature has not thought fit to constitute an appellate authority, then no appeal lies from the Court of first instance. What is pointed out is that under the Bombay Industrial Relations Act, Section 84 deals with appeals and an appeal is provided to the Industrial Court from the decision of a Labour Court in respect of various matters, but a determination by the Labour Court whether a strike, lock-out, closure or stoppage was illegal or not is made appealable, and Mr. Phadke says that there was good reason, why finality should be given to this decision of the Labour Court. Mr. Phadke points out that under Section 97 (3) a 'locus poenitentiae' is given to the employees to resume work within 48 hours of a Labour Court declaring a strike to be illegal, and if they do not resume work within 48 hours, they are liable to incur penalties, and therefore according to Mr. Phadke it was the intention of the Legislature that the employees should know at the earliest opportunity whether the strike was illegal or not, and if it was so held to be illegal by the Labour Court, then the law gave them the opportunity of going back to work within 48 hours. Therefore, it was. essential that finality should be given to this decision of the Labour Court, and it was precisely because of this that the Bombay Industrial Relations Act, 1946, did not provide for an appeal from this decision. Mr. Phadke says that we should not read the definition of "industrial tribunal" in Section 2 of Act; 48 of 1950 so as to disturb this finality. Mr. Phadke's argument is that the Central Legislature could never have contemplated to have conferred a right of appeal in matters which the State Legislature thought it necessary to make final and advisedly did not provide for any appeals. The answer to that contention is very simple. As we have already pointed out, the scheme of Section 2 (c) (ii) and (iii) is to give a right of appeal where no right of appeal existed under the State legislation. Under the State legislation the decision of the Labour Court, whether a strike was illegal or not, was final and no appeal lay from that decision. The Central Act dealt with this very contingency and provided a right of appeal to the appellate tribunal. It is impossi- ble to accept the contention of Mr. Phadke that the Central Legislature in clause (iii) was thinking of only those cases where the State legislation did not provide for any appellate authority. According to Mr. Phadke's contention, it was only if there was no Industrial Court which is an appellate tribunal under the Bombay Act that the decision of the Labour Court with regard to the legality of the strike would have been appealable to the appellate tribunal. In other words, the reasoning of Mr. Phadke is that there being an appellate tribunal under the Bombay Act and the Bombay Legislature advisedly having not provided an appeal to that tribunal, we must not construe the Central Act as providing for an appeal and undermining the principle of finality. In our opinion, the language used in clause (iii) of Section 2 (c) is much too clear for any other interpretation. The only test that clause (iii) lays down is that no appeal should lie from a particular decision, and it cannot be disputed that no appeal lies from the decision of the Labour Court holding that the strike was not illegal. Therefore, in our opinion, the Appellate Tribunal had jurisdiction to hear this appeal.