The Madras High Court bench today slapped a fine of Rs 20,000 on Tamil Nadu Khadi and Village Industries Board for filing a review application against its order to pay wages for 20 workers from August 2010 to November 2012 without implementing its order to give employent in that period.
Dismissing the review application, Justice S Vaidyanathan said the Khadi Board was renowned for providing employment and quoted Mahathma Gandhi as having said that it delivered the poor from the bonds of the rich and created a moral and spiritual bond between the classes and masses.
Unlike Gandhi, who was associated with Khadi and practised "Ahimsa"(non violence), the board had committed an act of "Himsa" (harassing) its workmen, he said.
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The judge noted that the labour court had already directed the government to regularise their service. However, the management had obtained a stay.
The court had then directed the Board to provide the employees work as they were starving. But this order too was not implemented.
The HC directed the management to provide wages for the eriod when they were not given job as per its order, against which the Board filed a review petition.
The Judge rejected the contention of the management that the workers were not appointed through proper channels and that they were gainfully employed somwhere else and that was why they had wilfully abstained from work.
The workers submitted they had been working continuously for 15 years and sought regularisation of service and pointed out that the labour court had allowed their plea.
The HC had also ordered that they be provided employment, the workers said.
The Judge today directed that Rs 10,000 from the fine amount be given to Spastic Society of India and Rs 10,000 to the YRG centre for AIDS research and education.
He also said that the workers needed to be reinstated as permanent employees as directed by the labour court.
Justice Vaidyanathan said those who are alive and those who had attained superannuation were also entitled to back wages.
If the workers had passed away, their legal heirs were entitled to backwages, he said.
On the issue of sanction for an employee to prosecute an industrial dispute, the Judge said implementation of the award passed by the presiding officer, who was none other than the district judge, was being scrutinized by the bureaucracy now "in a snail-paced manner" for sanction of prosecution.
The Act should be amended in a such a way that the power of prosectuion must be entrusted to the respective labour court or tribunal, he said.
