People's Democracy

THE Supreme Court judgement of August 30, 2001, in the civil appeal filed by the Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) and others, overruling the judgement of the same court in the Air India case, is a regressive and retrograde step. It has, by one stroke, nullified whatever the contract workers have gained through their struggle for decades and their battle for justice in different courts of law.

During the last 25 years, the Supreme Court had to intervene in many cases and delivered several landmark judgements in favour of the workers, after seeing the ruthless exploitation of and denial of social justice to these workers. The judgement in the Air India case in 1996 sought to set right many ambiguities and infirmities in the law and enforce the social obligations of the employers towards contract workers.

In an earlier case, the Supreme Court had noted "the naked truth, though draped in different perfect paper arrangements, that the real employer is the management, not the immediate contractor" and that "myriad devices, half-hidden in fold after fold of legal form may be resorted to when labour legislation casts welfare obligation on real employer, based on articles 38, 39, 42, 43A of the constitution."

In the Air India case, the Supreme Court relied on this observation regarding the relations between the principal employer and the contract labourer, and ruled that "Once the contractor intermediary goes, the term "principal" also goes with it… and the employer necessarily becomes a direct employer of these erstwhile contract workers."

After the Air India judgement, the government of India should have changed the act, but it did not come to the help of these hapless contract workers. Instead, some public sector units went in appeal and now the Supreme Court has reversed the Air India case judgement, making absorption of these workers almost impossible.

The entire trade union movement expresses serious concern over this judgement which has not taken into account the social and human factors involved and which will perpetuate the ruthless exploitation by way of abysmally poor wages, no social security, no job security for millions of contract workers. We demand of the government of India to take immediate steps for bringing in appropriate enactment to annul the latest SC verdict and amend section 10 of CLRA Act making it mandatory for the employers to absorb as regular employees the contract workers in perennial jobs. We call upon all unions to protest the judgement of the Supreme Court and send telegrams to the union minister of labour demanding enactment of a legislation to annul the effect of the judgement. (INN)