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The petition (Writ Petition No.1920 of 2014), filed by a trade union, challenges an award of Industrial Tribunal in a dispute involving wages and allowances payable by the Respondent employer to its workmen represented by the Petitioner union.

2               A few salient facts of the Petitioner's case, necessary for





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determination of the controversy, may be noted as follows :

Respondent No.2 ('VVF Ltd.'), established in the year 1939, was manufacturing and marketing personal care products including soaps, shampoos and cosmetics. Over the years, it acquired and established various units all over the world. Its website (as of 2014) claims a global capacity of 300,000 metric tonnes per year as a contract manufacturer of bar soap, making it one of the largest such manufacturer in the world. We are concerned here with its two units in Maharashtra, namely, at Sion/Sewree in Mumbai ("Mumbai unit") and at Taloja in Thane district ("Taloja unit"). In course of time, it started manufacturing partially hydrogenated vegetable oils at the Mumbai unit. This business showed rapid expansion and steadily grew in terms of turnover and net profits. Around the year 2004, the company started its Taloja unit, installing one of the largest fatty alcohol plants there. In the following years, i.e. 2005 and 2006, it commissioned a soap noodle and fatty acid fractional distillation plant and a fatty acid hydrogenation plant at Taloja and shifted its plant and machinery from Mumbai to Taloja. Despite the fact that operations at Mumbai and Taloja, which were under one common business division, were the same, required the same set of skills and involved the same working conditions, there was disparity in service conditions between Mumbai and Taloja plant workers; the wages of Taloja workers were far too higher than their counterparts in Mumbai. A charter of demands was accordingly made by the Petitioner union for Mumbai workers, which came to be referred to the Industrial Tribunal. During the pendency of the reference, VVF Ltd. was demerged and Respondent No.1 ('VVF India Ltd.') became the resulting company. The undertaking at Sewree remained with sat 3/33 wp 1920-2014 & 3152-2014.doc the demerged company, i.e. VVF Ltd., whilst the Sion unit and Taloja unit went to the resulting company, i.e. VVF India Ltd. In order to allay the apprehensions of the Petitioner union, two concrete assurances were made to the Company Court, which were recorded and accepted by it in its order sanctioning the scheme of demerger. One was that the benefit of the then pending adjudication (Ref. IT 44 of 2009) on wage revision for general demands of the workmen would be extended to the employees of Sewree unit, which would remain with the demerged company. The other was that whilst assessing the financial capacity of the employer as one of the parameters for wage adjudication, the common balance sheet of the demerged company (without giving effect to the demerger scheme) as on the appointed date (i.e. 1 April 2011) shall be considered. The wage dispute reference was accordingly prosecuted and it resulted into an award of 29 March 2014, impugned herein. By the impugned award dated 29 March 2014, the Industrial Tribunal partly granted the Petitioner's demands on certain allowances, but rejected their main demands of revision in pay scales, and fixed and variable dearness allowances. This award has been challenged both by the Petitioner union and the Respondent employer.

24 We may now come to the individual demands of wage revision and examine their justification. As I have held above, the workmen of the Respondents' Mumbai unit are entitled to parity with those at their Taloja unit. I propose to now examine the individual elements of salary to that end. Whilst doing so, what I have kept in mind is the overall pay packets of the workmen arising from the resultant exercise. The order of reference mainly related to (i) basic wages, (ii) adjustment increment, (iii) fixed dearness allowance, and (iv) variable dearness allowance. So far as the revision of wage scales (Demand No.1) is concerned, it is submitted by the Respondents that the last pay scale revision was made in 2006 and a demand for revising it in 2009 is not in order. Mr.Bapat argues that in normal course revision in pay scale is to be made after a period of minimum 15 years; Variable Dearness Allowance (VDA), annual increments and LTS amounts provide the workmen upward wage revision year on year. In the first place, there is no such inflexible rule. The Supreme Court, as far back as in Balmer Lawrie & Co.'s case (supra), had made it very clear that whenever a claim is made for revising the wage structure on the grounds of justifiable circumstances, the industrial adjudicator would not normally be justified in rejecting it solely on the ground that enough time has not passed after the last award. If that is so, there is nothing to suggest that a structural change in the form of a revision in pay scales is per se impermissible within any particular interval. No doubt any change in pay scales has an impact beyond the wage fixation sat 25/33 wp 1920-2014 & 3152-2014.doc period, but that is so virtually for every other component of wage, at least in practice if not in theory. The cost of living index is ever on the rise; and any change in fixed or variable dearness allowance or other allowance is not expected to be revised downwards in future; it would always introduce a permanent burden on the employer, that is to say, beyond the particular wage fixation period. There is indeed no hard and fast rule in this behalf. Every question of revision, as the Supreme Court put it in Balmer Lawrie & Co. and reiterated in Unichem Laboratories Ltd. (supra), must be examined on merits in each individual case that is brought before an adjudicator. In our case, we are undertaking this exercise of revision of pay scales so as to rationalize the salary structures of affected workmen and bring them on par with similarly situated workmen. So long as we take into account the overall impact of the revised pay scales from the point of view of future financial burden on the employer, there could be no objection to revising the scales per se.

29 To arrive at the proposed revision, the existing fixed dearness allowance of Rs.225/- for daily rated unskilled (USK), Semi skilled (SSK) and skilled workmen (SK) as also monthly rated Highly Skilled workmen (HSK), 1st class boiler attendants, watchmen, head watchman, drivers, peons (i.e. all employees other than supervisors and officers) can be appropriately raised by Rs.1000/- per month so as to make it Rs.1225/- per month. Fixed dearness allowance for monthly rated junior supervisors, supervisors and senior supervisors and officers may not be increased. So far as variable dearness allowance is concerned, no increase may be in order till 2011. Increase, if any, deserves to be considered from 2011 onwards, which demand, any way, is the subject matter of a separate reference (for sat 30/33 wp 1920-2014 & 3152-2014.doc the period 2011-2014).

30 So far as variable dearness allowance (VDA) is concerned, the union proposes to categorize the workmen at Mumbai into two categories:

(i) Daily rated unskilled (USK); semi-skilled (SSK); and skilled (SK), and

(ii) Monthly rated Highly skilled (HSK); 1 st class Boiler Attendants;

Watchmen, Head Watchmen; Peons; Drivers; Jr.Supervisor; Supervisor; Sr.Supervisor; officer and other monthly rated staff. Variable dearness allowance of categories (i) and (ii) are proposed to be increased, respectively, by 30% and 20% over and above VDA under the pre-revised scheme with effect from 1.1.2011. Since that almost takes us to the end of the wage fixation period considered in the reference, and since for the period between 1.4.2011 to 31.3.2014, a separate reference has been pending, I have not deemed it fit to order any increase for the period upto 31.3.2011.