JUDGMENT

DESAI, J. :— Bonus has a tantalizing influence on industrial workers. They look forward to it with a craving, the degree of which is immeasurable. And for the employees any form of bonus has such a tremendous attraction that the time honoured concept of its being a profit sharing formula to fill in the gap between the fair wage and the living wage in the case of industrial workmen has been for all practical purposes displaced by the Payment of Bonus Act and bonus telescoping into Government service where there being no production and therefore it cannot be an incentive for higher production. And yet the management of the Model Mills, Nagpur (Employer for short) has most successfully thwarted the meagre expectation of minimum bonus to its workmen for full two decades.

2. Rashtriya Mill Mazdoor Sangh, appellant herein. (Union for short) as an approved Union made four independent references under Sec. 73A of the Bombay Industrial Relations Act, 1946 (Act for short) against Model Mills, Nagpur for grant of bonus for the period 1964-65 to 1967-68. A separate reference was made in respect of each accounting year. The Union as representative Union of the employees served a notice