Indian Drugs & Pharmaceuticals Ltd vs Workman, Indian Drugs & ...

The facts of the case are that the appellant is a Public Sector Undertaking which has a plant in Rishikesh where it was manufacturing pharmaceuticals. The present dispute relates to the ten concerned employees who were appointed as casual workers on daily rate basis for the reason that they were dependants of employees dying in harness. Such appointments were made by the appellant due to the persistent and prolonged agitation by the trade union since the appellant wanted to maintain industrial harmony, although there was no rule/policy for such compassionate appointment in the service of the appellant company, which was already over-staffed. As against 1049 sanctioned posts, there were already 1299 employees working in the company at the relevant time.

The aforesaid ten persons were paid wages according to the rates of daily wages, declared by the State Government from time to time, as agreed with the union. Since the appellant was already over-staffed in all its departments, the said persons were given work in the nature of cleaning window panes, sweeping floors and such sundry jobs on contract basis which work was not the work of the regular employees of the appellant-company.

From the year 1986 the financial position of the appellant- company became critical as it was running on huge losses and hence its corporate office issued stop/ban order, banning any fresh recruitment/appointments. The company also applied to the BIFR as it had become sick. The BIFR had also issued directions to the company to reduce its manpower in order to try to revive the company, but despite this situation the union started pressing and agitating for regularization of the aforesaid ten concerned daily rated employees. The failure of talks between the company and the union led to the reference of a dispute under the Industrial Disputes Act before the Labour Court in the year 1992 in the following terms :

No comment is necessary on the above passage as it is explicit enough.

We are of the opinion that if the court/tribunal directs that a daily rate or ad hoc or casual employee should be continued in service till the date of superannuation, it is impliedly regularizing such an employee, which cannot be done as held by this Court in Secretary, State of Karnataka vs. Umadevi (supra), and other decisions of this Court. In view of the above discussion, we are of the opinion that the orders of the Labour Court as well as the High Court were wholly unjustified and cannot be sustained for the reasons already mentioned above. The appeal is, therefore, allowed. The impugned judgment of the High Court and the Labour Court are set aside and the Reference made to the Labour Court is answered in the negative. There shall be no order as to costs.

Before parting with this case, we would like to state that although this Court would be very happy if everybody in the country is given a suitable job, the fact remains that in the present state of our country's economy the number of jobs are limited. Hence, everybody cannot be given a job, despite our earnest desire.

In the present case, the appellant is a sick company which has been running on huge losses for many years, and is practically closed down. There are no vacancies on which the respondents could have been appointed. While we may have sympathy with them, we cannot ignore the hard economic realities, nor the settled legal principles. The appeal is allowed.