MAHARASHTRA GENERAL KAMGAR UNION Vs. HOTEL IN PHOM

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This Appeal can be disposed of at the stage of admission. Accordingly, the Appeal is admitted. Mr. Madon on behalf of the 1st Respondent waives service. Respondent No. 2 being the Industrial Court need not be served in Appeal. By consent, the Appeal is placed on board for hearing and called out. Advocates are heard.

(2.) This Appeal is from a speaking order passed by the single Judge holding; that no intervention with the decision or the Industrial Court is called for. The Industrial Court had held on the material before it that what the employer had done after giving notice of closure on 28th December 1983 was to effect a closure from 1st March 1984. However, it is the admitted position that the restaurant in the Hotel was restarted on 15th June 1984 and that within one or two weeks thereafter all the departments of the hotel being the employer's business had resumed activities and had recommenced work though not with all the original employees.

(3.) It was very strenuously urged before us that subsequent events are totally irrelevant and that the Court concerned with the position existing as on 1st March 1984. Again it was submitted that the employer called this a closure and that this was almost decisive. Of course, there were other technical contentions raised, v/z., that the complaint under the Maharashtra Recognition of Trade Unions and Prevention of Unfair Labour Practices Act was not a proper remedy, that the Union or the workmen had not challenged the purported closure though notice had been given to it and that the claim for re-employment in the manner done was misconceived. The aforesaid contentions are technical contentions and need not be gone into at this stage. Indeed, it would appear to us that the Industrial Court as also Labour Courts should be in a position to rise above technicalities and find a way out if justice of the matter so requires. However, the other two points raised by the employer, viz., that subsequent events are irrelevant or that the employer's description of the occasion for ceaser of employment is conclusive require to be gone into. It would appear to us that the authorities which were cited before us on behalf of the employer themselves militate against acceptance of such broad propositions. The first of the authorities cited was Kalinga Tubes v. Their Workmen, (1969) 1 L.LJ. 557. In the said decision, Grover J. speaking for the Supreme Court has referred to earlier decisions of that Court wherein it was indicated that the closure has to be genuine and bona fide in the sense that it should be a closure in fact and not a mere pretence of closure. In the very same authority it was noted that the business must be closed down finally and irrevocably. In the instant case, it is alleged by the Union and the workmen that what was done after 1 st March 1984 was to carry out repairs and renovation after which in June 1994 the restaurant initially and thereafter the entire hotel was reopened. Can this not be said to be a mere pretence of a closure on account of perhaps most improper activities of the workmen which had brought the business of the hotel to a standstill ? Indeed it was open to the management to have charge sheeted the workmen and to have terminated their services after proper inquiry. It has not done so. Instead, it has adopted, what prima facie appears to us, to be a device of a closure.