Indian Kanoon - Search engine for Indian Law

(1) The Buckingham and Carnatic Co., Ltd.--I shall hereafter call it the Mills-employs in all some 14,700 persons. Of these about 700 belong to the clerical establishment. 434 members of the clerical establishment belong to the Buckingham and Carnatic Mills Staff Union. Some 10,000 of the workmen including a few members of the clerical establishment belong to the Madras Labour Union. In March 1955 the Madras Labour Union wrote to the management making various demands on behalf of the employees of the mills. Conciliation proceedings were started, but they ended in failure.

In November 1955, the Government of Madras referred various matters in issue between the Madras Labour Union and the Mills to the industrial Tribunal, Madras. Subsequently the Labour Union and the management agreed that the disputes might be referred to arbitration by a sitting Judge of this court, and, Ramaswami Goundar J. was appointed arbitrator. On 19-1-1957 he made an award.

(2) In the clerical establishment of the Mills are a number of persons engaged in working various calculating machines. They are called Comptists and Machine operators. Subsequent to the award which Ramaswami Goundar J. made on 19th January 1957,, the Buckingham and Carnatic Mills Staff Union raised a dispute about the "fixation of scales of pay for Comptists and Machine operators." The Government took the view that this was an industrial dispute, and, on 1st December 1958, made an order referring this question for adjudication to the Industrial Tribunal, Madras. By a subsequent order made on 4th February 1959 the Government enlarged their reference so as to read as follows:

I may add here that the first paragraph of the report makes it clear that the expression "industrial dispute" is defined in the U. P. Act in the same way as in S. 2 of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947.

(9) The decision in Ex parte keable Press Ltd., 1943-2 All ER 633, which Mr. Mohan Kumaramangalam cited before me does not carry the matter very much farther forward because it is clear that the demand made on the management in that case was supported by the employees in general.

(10) Mr. Rajah Aiyar advanced certain arguments of a general character. He pointed out that the main purpose of the Act is to set up machinery for resolving not individual disputes but industrial disputes of a general character. By far the most important of these disputes are those that arise between managements on the one side and these employees on the other. The management of a concern is easily located since it is either a natural or a legal person; but, employees generally form an amorphous and often-times shifting mass of individuals. Now, asked Mr. Rajah Aiyar, unless the organisation which claims to speak and act on behalf of the mass of employees can properly show that it has authority to represent that mass--not necessarily the whole of that mass but at least the majority of the members constituting that mass--how can there be any adjudication or settlement of the questions or disputes that arise between the management and the mass of workers? Every settlement or adjudication implies the existence of a dispute between two parties. If the persons claiming to represent the workmen do not represent a majority of the workmen who would be the other party vis--vis the management? An establishment may employ several thousand workmen. Several of them may belong to no union at all and the rest of them may belong to various unions, each with its own views, policies and ideologies. In such a situation who has got a right to speak and act on behalf of the employees? If the Act is to be worked at all then we must insist that in respect of questions between a management and its employees, the employees must be represented by somebody who has got a right to speak on behalf of the majority of the employees of that establishment. In the present case the Madras Labour Union which has a membership of about 10,000 is not backing the cause of the Comptists and Machine operators. The only persons who back their claims are the Buckingham and Carnatic Mills Staff Union, and, it has a membership of only a little over 400. It is impossible to say that they constitute even a substantial part of the workers of the mills whose aggregate strength exceeds 14,000. The present, therefore, cannot be said to be an industrial dispute.

(14) One must also not forget that very often unions cut across the line of employers that is to say, one union may include the employees in a number of establishments.

(15) The Act contains no provisions for dealing with situations where there are a number of unions in the filed and each one claims to be exclusively entitled to speak and act on behalf of the employees in a particular establishment or industry. As the Act stands it will be impossible to insist that before a dispute between a management and its employees can be called an industrial dispute that dispute must have the backing of the majority of the employees under that management. The decisions do not go farther than saying that before a dispute can be called an industrial dispute it must have the backing of a substantial number of the employees. A substantial number need not be a majority. In the present case it will no doubt be difficult to say that the 434 persons who form the Buckingham and Carnatic Mills Staff Union form a substantial part of the employees in the mills since their number exceeds 14,000. But then the total strength of the clerical establishment of the mills is only about 700 and of these 434 belong to the Staff Union. 434 is a substantial part of 700. As I mentioned before, unions based on crafts, are a common feature of the modern industrial system, and, where a genuine union based on a craft exists and that union has a majority of the employees engaged on that craft and belonging to that establishment it will not ordinarily be proper to say that a dispute backed by such a union is not an industrial dispute.