In industrial disputes regarding retirement age, tribunals should prioritize prevailing industry-cum-region practices to ensure uniformity. A consistent regional trend toward a specific retirement age, supported by previous awards and committee reports, should be upheld unless contradicted by strong, unambiguous evidence.

Judgment

DAS GUPTA, J.: This appeals arises out of an industrial dispute as regards the age of retirement. The first respondent, Shaw Wallace and Co., was incorporated in January 1946 as a Private Limited Company to take over the business of the partnership firm of the Shaw Wallace and Co., which had been doing business in India for about 60 years. In July 1947 the Private Limited Company was converted into a Public Limited Company. The Head Office of the Company is at Calcutta. It has Branches in Bombay, Delhi and Madras. The general practice of the Company both at the Head Office and the Branch Offices appears to have been to retire its employees at the age of 55 though in certain cases the Company in its discretion permitted an employee to continue beyond that age. In September 1959 an agreement was entered into between the Company and its employees at Calcutta under which the age of retirement was extended to 58 years subject to the employees passing a medical examination on reaching the age of 55. Shortly after this the Company s employees at Bombay raised a dispute regarding their retirement age. They claimed that no workman should be retired from service before he had completed 60 years of age. The dispute was ultimately referred to the Industrial Tribunal, Maharashtra. Before the Tribunal the Company resisted the workmen s claim but submitted that it was agreeable to introduce for its Bombay employees provisions similar to those which had been introduced by agreement for the Calcutta employees- retirement at the age of 58 subject to the employee passing a medical examination on reaching the age of 55.

2. The Tribunal has directed that the age of retirement should be 58 but the Company may in its discretion and with the express or implied consent of the employee concerned continue an employee after he attains that age. It is against this decision that the present appeal has been filed by the workmen.

3. As has already been noticed there is no dispute that the age of compulsory retirement should not remain at 55. The dispute is whether it should be fixed at 58 or at 60. It is interesting to refer in this connection to the information that has been collected by the Pay Commission (1957-59) as regards the pensionable ages prescribed under the Pension Insurance Schemes for employees generally or for industrial employees and under social assistance or universal schemes in forty-eight countries in 1954. According to this the pensionable age is 70 in two countries; 67 in another two; 65 in twenty-four, 60 in seventeen, 55 in two and 50 in one. Thus out of 48 countries for which information was available it was found that in 45 countries the pensionable age was fixed at 60 or more. As the Pay Commission Report pointed out : -

"This is particularly remarkable, considering that the countries differ widely in demographic constitution, levels of economic development, and climatic and social conditions; and it indicates a virtual unanimity of competent opinion that balancing the various factors - physiological, economic and social - that are relevant the normal working life should continue upon the age of 60, and may well go on upto 65 years."

4. It is undoubtedly more useful, however, and indeed essential for our present purpose to examine the trends in this latter in our own country and specially in the region in which the present dispute has arisen. In the delicate task of adjusting needs of the employees to the interests of the employers and what is even more important to the general interests of the country at large, industrial adjudication has to pay special attention to the prevailing practice in the industrial region concerned. If in any particular region employees have been successful in their claim for fixing the age of retirement at 60 this very success is bound to raise in other in the region similar expectations. Refusal of similar relief to them is likely to create discontent. It is the endeavour of industrial adjudication