MARUTI MAHIPATI MULLICK Vs. POLSON LIMITED

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE first petitioner is an employee of the first respondent M/a, Poison Ltd. He is working in the Coffee factory run by the first respondent. In June 1959, a trade union representing the workmen in the Coffee factory raised certain demands, including demands for pay scales and dear -ness allowance. The demands were admitted in conciliation under Section 12 of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1917. In the course of conciliation proceedings a settlement was reached between the first respondent and the Union on 4th March I960. Under the settlement the lowest wage scale was Rs. 36 -2 -60 for mazdoors of different categories. As regards dearness allowance, the settlement provided that all workmen shall be paid dearness allowance at the revised scale as was then available to the operatives in the cotton textile industry in Bombay city. It was provided that the settlement was to remain in force till 31st December 1962.

(2.) ON 31st October 1964 the first petitioner, who was then working as a mazdoor in the coffee factory and was receiving basic wages of Rs. 40 per month and dearness allowance under the settlement, was retrenched by the first respondent along with fourteen other workmen. Shortly afterwards, on 26th November 1964, the first petitioner and the other fourteen retrenched workmen were re -engaged as casual workers in the coffee factory of the first respondent. After re -employment, they were paid wages at a consolidated rate of Rs. 2.75 per day, which was much less than the amount of basic wage and dearness allowance which a mazdoor was entitled to receive under the settlement. The first petitioner and the fourteen other workmen filed applications on 11th January 1965 before the Authority under the Payment of Wages Act (respondent No. 2) alleging that illegal deductions were made in their wages for the period between 26th November 1964 and 5th December 1964. They claimed that they were entitled to the wages drawn by them at the time of retrenchment or, in the alternative, to the lowest wage with dearness allowance which a mazdoor was entitled to receive under the settlement.

(3.) THE learned Authority consolidated the fifteen applications and heard the parties on the preliminary issue whether the Authority had jurisdiction to entertain the applications. The Authority found that he had no such jurisdiction and dismissed the fifteen applications. The legality of this order is challenged before us in this petition under Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution.