Mr.
Chairman, Sir, the point which Mr. Smith made was with regard to the Technical
Personnel Ordinance. He said that this Technical Personnel Ordinance has
in it the principle of inequality of treatment between employer and the
employees. The point that is sought to be made out there was that under the
Technical Personnel Ordinance, an employee is not free to resign from his
employment, while under the same Ordinance an employer is free to discharge
an employee. Sir, I should like to state the true position as may be
found from a reading of this Ordinance. The true position is that an employee
is not required to obtain permission of his employer if he wants
to resign. What is required120 by the Ordinance is that he should
ask permission of the Tribunal if he wants to resign. On that point,140
I think Mr. Smith is somewhat misinformed. Then, Sir, with regard to
the power of the employer to discharge, the160 position that, as a
rule, he is not allowed to discharge or dismiss an employee unless he
has obtained permission of the Tribunal. There is undoubtedly one exception
and the exception is that in case of insubordination of misconduct
which calls for disciplinary action the employer may dismiss his employee
without obtaining the permission of the tribunal. Now, Sir, I do not think
that this particular provision which permits an employer to get rid of
an employee who has misconducted240 himself or who is insubordinate
can be a ground for complaint. In the way in which our industry is organised, it
is the employer who has the right to dismiss a worker who is of no service
to him. Therefore,280 I think there is no point in
that. But what I wanted to inform the House, and Mr. Smith particularly,
is that in order that there may be no abuse of this provision we
have amended the Ordinance in two320 important particulars. The first thing
that we did and that was done expressly at the desire of Mr. Smith was to
constitute advisory committees to be associated with the Tribunal. On
these advisory committees there are representatives of labour, 360
and I have no doubt that with the help of these advisory committees, they
will be able to bring to the attention of the Tribunal such cases which arise
due to victimisation.
The
second and the most important step which has been taken is this.
We have now issued an order calling upon the Chairman of the Tribunal to
place420
on record his reasons for not allowing an employee to resign from or to
quit his job. This is a provision which we have borrowed from the Criminal
Procedure Code, so that at the centre of the Government it
would be possible for us to know whether there were legitimate and proper
grounds for the Chairman of the Tribunal not permitting480 an employee to resign
from his job. Mr. Smith has also pointed out that the conditions in coal mines
were not very satisfactory. I do not claim that the conditions are ideal but I
do like to say that the Labour Department has taken definite
steps to bring about better conditions in coal mines. We have
been running our coal mines with two types of labour— local labour, and the
labour which we have imported from outside, principally from560
the Gorakhpur district of Uttar Pradesh.
There are 20 officers under the Chief
Inspector of Mines. In addition to that, we have now appointed a Chief
Labour Commissioner at the Centre. Under him, there are three Deputy
Labour Commissioners who will be600 in charge of all the welfare
activities. Mr. Smith said that the Labour Department was always behind
time in taking action. On this point, what I would like to submit is
that in the circumstances in which we are640 carrying on the
activities of the Labour Department, delay is inevitable. We have got to
consult the Provincial Governments, we have got to consult the
organisers of labour, we have got to consult the employees. All this must
necessarily take time, and therefore, I do not think that there is
any point in Mr. Smith saying that we delay700 matters.
Sir, since December last year, when
the ban on women working in underground mines was first withdrawn, there has
been720
a consistent protest throughout the country against this undesirable
action. The Government of India is fully aware that it has not only violated an
international pledge but that it has considerably shocked and offended world
opinion. A year ago, at the request of All-India Women’s Conference, I moved an
adjournment motion asking that the ban be re-imposed immediately, and my
honourable friend also spoke on a cut motion on labour during the Budget
Session on the same subject, but the800 plea of the Honourable Labour Minister
at that time was that this was a very temporary measure
only to be carried on till the next harvesting season and not for the
period of the war that arrangements were being made840 to remedy the labour
shortage, and that once these arrangements went through, the ban would
be lifted. Sir, the attitude was that we were creating all this song
and dance about nothing since the period was to be very short. A year
has come and gone and today I think the attitude has become far more adamant.
The Honourable Labour Minister has made it clear that he does not intend
to reimpose that ban. The Honourable Members of this House are only too
well aware of all the circumstances and realise fully that if the arguments, which
have been put forward, had come from a merciless type of capitalist
employer, they could have been understood. But it is beyond our960
comprehension how they could have been ratified and even advanced by those
who are primarily responsible for the protection and980
the well-being of the common people. Sir I should like to have the
support of the House because this is a legitimate demand, and the infringing
of this demand leads to the infringing of one of the most elementary
canons of human decency.
Sir,
with regard to this cut motion, it is difficult to deal with it
adequately within limited time that is at my disposal. I would start
by saying that the last time when this question was debated on an adjournment
motion, I made the statement that I felt very unhappy about the
decision which the Government1080 of India has taken. But the
circumstances are such that it is impossible to take any other
action than what we have taken. It is unnecessary for me to
tell the House that the coal cutter is a prime mover1120 in the process of
producing coal. It is no use having a very large labour force in the
coal mines if you have not got a sufficient number of coal cutters. Coal
cutting is the primary activity. This is the crux of whole problem that
this important class of workmen has decreased very fast. The reasons why these
coal cutters have decreased are well known to the House. In the areas where
the coal mines are situated, there were tremendous1200 possibilities opened
up by various industrial establishments, military works, and alternative
employments, where wages were considerably higher than they were in the coal
industry. The alternative employment had also the advantage that it was the
work on surface, which is undoubtedly far more attractive than the work
underground. The third reason why the coal cutters preferred to quit the mines1260
in favour of the other employment on the surface was because the coal
cutter could take his wife along with1280 him and get her earnings added to
his own and thus increase the family earnings. If he worked in the mines he
could not benefit of her earnings because of the ban. This was probably
the greatest inducement which the coal cutter had in alternative
employments that were within his reach. Now, I have no doubt that
nothing else would have helped to bring back the coal cutter except to allow
his wife the opportunity to work with him and earn a wage. In my judgment
nothing else could have enabled us to retrieve the position and get back
the coal cutter into the coal mine. We have been told that we could
have got back labour to the coal1400 mines by increasing wages. On this
point, what I would like to say is that this is an argument which has
its force but when carried to extremes, it turns out to be useless. My friend Mr.
Smith yesterday referred1440 to the fact that they paid enormous
wages to coal miners in England and that it was the best paid industry. There
is no doubt about that. But Mr. Smith forgot the fact that even in England
where they pay such enormous wages to the coal miners, there has been an
enormous shortage of labour available for coal mines. Therefore, Sir,
the point is that wages could not be that sovereign remedy which has
been suggested to be. In our judgment, the only method of retrieving
a very bad and a very serious situation was to take the decision that
we have taken. 1544
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