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The first writ petition, viz., W.P. No.6137 of 2018 is filed by 5 workers of the third respondent Management claiming to be a Five Member Committee representing the workmen of the factory seeking a direction to the first two respondents in that writ petition not to aid the third respondent Management in engaging contract workers in direct manufacturing process at their factory. When the matter came up on 19.03.2018, notice was ordered to the respondents.

2 Subsequently, the Management of the company filed the second writ petition, viz.,W.P. No.7132 of 2018, seeking a direction to the police to take appropriate action on the complaint lodged by them on 10.03.2018 and for grant of adequate and effective police protection, so that, the workmen of the factory represented by the Five Member Committee do not hold any demonstration, dharna, blockage, gherao, shouting slogans, etc. thereby causing hindrance to egress and ingress of the willing workers, staff and Management staff and vehicles within 500 meters radius of the factory premises. The second writ petition came up on 27.03.2018 and it was directed to be posted along with the first writ petition filed by the workmen.

3.Mr.Silambanan, learned Senior Counsel appearing for the Management submitted that if the workers report for duty, the Management is willing to permit them to resume the work. 4 For the sake of convenience, the parties are broadly referred to as the Five Member Committee and Management. The workers represented by the Five Member Committee raised an industrial dispute before the Assistant Commissioner of Labour, Chennai  108 with reference to their charter of demands. It was submitted that the Management should make the 56 workers named in their charter of demands, as permanent workers, from the date on which they had completed 480 days of service and to pay the wages payable to the permanent workers. There were 26 other demands enclosed in their charter. The Five Member Committee also claimed that they represent 77 workers. The Management was running the factory from the year 2008 and had confirmed only 21 workers. They were also engaging other workers as Apprentices and Contract Workers. However, those workers are also directly employed in the manufacturing process. Based on the charter of demands and the industrial dispute raised under section 2(k) of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 (for short the ID Act), the Assistant Commissioner of Labour took up the dispute on his file and asked the Management to participate in the talks initiated by him vide his letter dated 17.08.2017.

I submit that a complaint was also made to the 1st and 2nd respondent on 13.03.2018 not to aid the 3rd respondent Management to bring in contract workers to engaged in the manufacturing operations. However, the police has been helping the Management.
I submit that unless the respondent is restrained from aiding the Management to engage the contract workers in the direct manufacturing processes the petitioner would suffer great hardship and the 3rd respondent will be successful in its illegal attempts. 15 It is seen from the letter dated 13.03.2018 that there is no allegation against those police officers that they were helping the Management in any way. On the other hand, there was only a narration about the activities of the Management and how their actions were contrary to the labour legislations. In the last paragraph of their letter, they had stated as follows:-
22 On the other hand, a peculiar relief viz., seeking a direction to the police not to aid the Management in engaging contract workers in the direct manufacturing processes, has been sought. No materials were placed to show that the State police were aiding the Management in that regard. The intention of the Five Member Committee is to get a similar relief as was found in the Gates Unitta (supra). However, in order to sustain the relief granted in that case, the learned Judge went on to consider whether the engagement of contract labour would amount to unfair labour practice in terms of Section 2(ra) r/w Section 25-T of the ID Act. The unfair labour practices, both by the employer and the workmen, have been set out in the Fifth Schedule of the ID Act and while the Act has prohibited commission of unfair labour practice by either side, Section 25-U of the Act makes it as a penal offence punishable with a term of 6 months imprisonment with or without fine.