The government passed the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act in 1970 to eradicate the evil practice. However, in recent decades, it has been considered less evil and more necessary for a liberalised economy. The focus of current legislative endeavours is on unshackling corporate bodies from all impediments. Little attention is paid to updating labour laws. The courts also suffer from dichotomous thinking on labour issues.
Last fortnight, the Supreme Court lamented that employers are adopting subterfuges these days to deny the rights of workers. In the case, Bhilwara Dugdh vs Vinod Kumar, dealing with contract workers, it said the employers showed the workers as those of the contractors or that they were merely daily wagers or causal employees, while they were doing the work of the regular staff.
On the other hand, some Benches of the same court have been tough on such workers. In the celebrated SAIL judgment of 2001, the court stated that no casual worker has a basic right to claim regularisation. In a recent appeal, Union of India vs A S Pillai, bandsmen were playing for the Tambaram air force station since 1982. When they asked for regularisation, the Madras High Court allowed their plea. But on government’s appeal, the Supreme Court denied their demand with remarks like these: “In addition to daily wages, they were given allowance for haircuts, washing uniform and, at times, also given breakfast and lunch.” The government can sometimes be maternal, but not a model, employer.
In another judgment, the court put the “burden of proof” on casual workers to prove with attendance records that they had been employed for a year continuously. Now go and tell a migrant from Peepli village to gather such evidence, when even the contractor would not keep such records.
A new issue came up before the court last week in the appeal case, DIAL vs Union of India. Can labourers working for a state entity claim continuity of tenure and absorption when the job is handed over to a private company? Since privatisation is the inexorable trend, this ruling has some significance, especially in the absence of any legislation.
The issue arose in the appeals of the trolley-retrievers at the Delhi airports. Earlier they were working under a contractor for the Airport Authority of India (AAI). They demanded the regularisation and abolition of the contract system since they were working for long years. The government issued a notification abolishing contract labour. Later, the functions carried out by the government undertaking were given to the newly-formed private firm, Delhi International Airport Private Ltd (DIAL) in 2006. The new contractor removed these labourers. This led to writ petitions in the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court. There were legal wrangles over which was the “appropriate government” (central or Delhi) under the law empowered to issue notifications and other technical issues.
The private company argued that it was independent of AAI. On the other hand, the workers contended that the notification abolishing contract labour was applicable to it and they were entitled to absorption in the new outfit. The high court and the Supreme Court ruled that the government has total control over AAI and the latter has control over the new private firm. Therefore, the notification abolishing contract labour was applicable to the private firm also.
The Supreme Court stated that if the Centre had not granted permission, DIAL would not be able to carry out functions at the Delhi airports. The entire functioning of DIAL is fully dependent on the grant of permission by the Centre. This ruling has far-reaching implications since the court holds that the private entities that take over the functions in such cases need not be government undertakings. Thus, it would seem that any “undertaking”, even a private one like DIAL, may function “under the authority” of the central government with all consequences.
It was argued on behalf of DIAL that “if the intent of Parliament was to make DIAL come under the authority of the central government it would have militated against the basic objective of achieving privatisation.”
However, the court noted that according to the agreement between the parties, the “rights and obligations associated with the operation and management of the airport would stand transferred” to DIAL. If DIAL has assumed all of AAI’s rights, it must also carry the burdens. The court warned that a contrary interpretation would allow AAI to circumvent the Centre’s exercise of authority over its work merely by contracting it out to third parties.
This is one ray of light in the otherwise bleak field of contract labour. If a private firm takes over the functions of government undertakings, the notifications under the contract labour abolition law would apply to the new employer also, even if the functions are in turn transferred to third parties. Public sector undertakings, railways and even bandmasters employed to entertain armed forces (as in the Tambaram case) can press their claim to regularisation and absorption if they can get the government to issue a notification prohibiting contract labour.
