GHATGE & PATIL CONCERN'S EMPLOYEES' UNION versus GHATGE & PATIL (TRANSPORTS) PRIVATE LTD. & ANR.

Citation: [1968] 1 S.C.R. 300 · Decided: 22-08-1967 · Supreme Court of India · Bench: M. HIDAYATULLAH · Disposal: Dismissed

Cited by 1 judgment(s) · see the full citation network in Lexace

Judgment (excerpt)

GHATGE & PATIL CONCERN'S EMPWYEES' UNION 
v. 
GHATGE &: PATIL (TRANSPORTS) PRIVATE LTD. & ANR. 
August 22, 1967 
[M. HlDAYATULLAH AND V. BHARGAVA, JJ.) 
Motor Transport Workers Act, 1961-Definition of 'Motor Trans-
port Worker'-'Employed', meaning of-lnd!Utrial Disvute-Trans-
port compony giving trucks on hire to contractors-Former drlveri 
of trucks becoming contractors after resigning from service of com-
pany-Such contractors whetlter Motor Tral!8port Workers-Con-
tract system whether amounts to unfair laboor practice. 
The respondent company carried on the business of transport 
and removal of goods by road. It owned a fleet of trucks and employed 
drivers and cleaners to run them. In 1963 the company, finding diffi-
culty in observing the pro.visions of the Motor Transport Workers 
Act 1961, introduced a scheme whereby the trucks, instead of being 
run by the company itself were hired out to contractors at a fixed 
rate per mile. Employees of the company who were engaged in run-
ning the trucks resigned their jobs and most of them who had for-
merly been drivers became contractors under the scheme. The work-
mens' Union however raised a dispute .asking for the reinstatement 
of the ex-employees who had been given work on contract basis. The 
Tribunal held that the contract system could not be said to be an 
unfair labour practice, for the ex-employees were never coerced or 
forced to resign their jobs, and they got more benefits from the con-
tract system than from their original contract of emp)oyment. In 
appeal to this Court the Union contended that the ex-employees of 
the company continued to be workmen notwithstanding that they 
were posed as independent contractors, that the beneficent legisla-
tion conceived in the interests of transport workers was being set 
at naught by the company, and that the setting up of the contract 
system amounted to unfair labour practice. 
Held: (i) Since the drivers had resigned their jobs they could 
not be said to be employed in the Motor Transport undertaking, The 
word 'employed' in the definition of Motor Transport. Worker is not 
used in the sense of using the services of a person but rather in the 
sense of keeping a person in one's service. 1Persons who are indepen-
dent and hire a vehicle for their own operation paying a fixed hire 
per mile from their earnings cannot be said to be persons employed 
in the Motor Transport Undertaking in the sense of persons kept in 
service. The operators were therefore not Motor Transport Workers 
within the definition. [304F-H) 
(ii) There was no bar in law to the introduction of the con-
tract system. A person must be considered free to so arrange his 
business that he avoids a regulatory law and its penal consequences 
which he has without the arrangement, no proper means of obeying. 
This, of course, he can do only so long as he does not break that or 
any other law. [306 B-C] 
(iii) Those who resigned did so voluntarily and they got sub-
stantial benefits under the new system. The Tribunal was right in its 
conclusion that there was no exploitation of the ex-employees. There 
800 
A 
B 
c 
D 
E 
p 
G 
H 
A 
B 
c 
D 
E 
I' 
B 
llllPLOYHI UNION~. G i; P (TR4Nl!P011i'll) (P) LTD. (Hida~atullah. J.) 301 
was thus no unfair labour practice. The present case was not ana-
logous to the case of contlact labour when employment of labour 
through a contractor or middleman put the labour at a disadvantage 
in collective bargaining and thua robbed labour of an 
important 
weapon in its armoury. [305E-306A] 
CIVIL APPELLATE JURJSDICI'ION: Civil Appeal No. 437 of 
1966. 
Appeal by special leave from the Award dated March 31, 1964 
of the Industrial Tribunal, Maharashtra in Reference (IT) No. 40 
of 1963. 
· 
H. K. Sowani, K. Rajendra Chaudhuri and K. R. Chaudhuri, 
for the appellant. 
H. R. Gokhole and /. N. Shroff, for respondent No. I. 
The Judgment of the Court was delivered by 
Hiclayatullalt, J. This is an appeal by special leave against 
the aiward dated .March 31,,1964 of the Industrial Tribunal, Maha-
rashtra in a Reference by Government under s. IO(l)(d) of the 
Industrial Disputes Act, 1947. The appellant is a Trade Union 
established on January I, 1962 by the employees of Ghatge & 
Patil <Transports) Private Ltd. and the respondent is the Company. 
The Company has its registered office at Kolhapur and is engaged 
in the transport and removal of goods by road. It operates on a 
large scale owning at the material time as many as 7

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