Judgment

WANCHOO, J,; This is an appeal by special leave against the award of the Industrial Tribunal, Bihar. It relates to the discharge of 119 workmen of the respondent who were employed as cane carrier mazdoors or as cane carrier supervisors or jamadars. All these were seasonal workmen. It is necessary to set out in some detail the circumstances leading to the discharge. The respondent is a sugar factory and the crushing season starts usually in the first half of November each year. We are concerned in the present appeal with November and December 1960. It appears that from the season 1956-57, the respondent introduced an incentive bonus scheme in the factory. The scheme continued thereafter from season to season with certain changes. It also appears that in the beginning of each season, the respondent used to put forward the incentive bonus scheme and consult the workmen. The same thing was done when the season 1960-61 was about to start in November 1960. But the scheme for this season proposed by the respondent contained certain changes which were apparently not acceptable to the workmen. One of the features in the scheme was that the crushing of sugar cane per day should be 32.000 maunds. The general secretary of the union of the workmen suggested certain alteration for the consideration of the respondent on November 7, 1960 and one of the main alternations suggested was that the norm for per day s crushing should be 25,000 maunds of cane and thereafter incentive bonus should be given at a certain rate. No agreement seems to have been reached on the incentive bonus scheme, and the complaint of the respondent was that the secretary incited the workmen to go-slow in consequence of the change in the scheme. Consequently mild go slow in the cane carrier department which is the basic department in a sugar mill began from the very start of the season on November 10, 1960. The respondent s case further was that on November 27, 1960, the workmen in the cane carrier department started in combination with one another to go-slow deliberately and wilfully and in a planned manner and thus reduced the average daily crushing to 26,000 maunds cane which was much less than the average crushing in previous seasons. This conduct of the workmen was said to be highly prejudicial to the respondent and besides being technically unsafe, had brought into existence an acute shortage in the fuel position which might have resulted in the complete stoppage of the mill and major breakdown of the machinery. When the position became serious the respondent issued a general notice on December 15, 1960 inviting the attention of the workmen concerned to this state of affairs which had been continuing at any rate since November 27, 1960. This notice was in the following terms:

"At the instigation of Shri J. Krishna the General Secretary of your Union, you, since the very beginning of this season, have been failing in your duty to ensure adequate and regular loading of the cane carrier, and with effect from the 27th November, 1960, you, in combination with each other, have deliberately and with resorted to clear go-slow tacties, a fact openly admitted by the above-named General Secretary of your Union in presence of the Labour Superintendent and Labour Officer, Muzzaffarpur, in course of discussions held on the subject in the office of the Assistant Labour Commissioner on the 6th December. 1960. You have deliberately reduced the average daily crushing the more or less 26,000 maunds out of which more than 2000 maunds is due to the newly introduced device of direct feeding of the cane carrier by cane carts weighted during nights and not attributable to any effort on your part. Thus the actual crushing given by you is practically something between 23,000 and 24,000 maunds only which is highly uneconomical and technically unsafe for this factory with an installed crushing capacity of more than 1200 tons a day. About 14,000 bales of extra bagasse kept in stock as r