The main legal point established in the judgment is that disputes arising from voluntary retirement schemes and the status of employees as workmen under the Industrial Disputes Act require adjudication of facts and are premature for the court to decide.

( 1 ) IN Writ Petition No. 1563 of 2005, the employer has sought relief for quashing the failure report and the reference dated April 12, 2005. That reference was made at the instance of the Philips Employees Union, a registered trade union.

( 2 ) WRIT Petition No. 1564 of 2005 has been filed by the employer in respect of the failure report and reference order dated April 20, 2005 and seeks quashing of the same. That reference was made at the instance of Respondent Nos. 4 to 108, who sought reference as workmen of the employer company.

( 3 ) AS the issues involved in both the petitions are the same or similar they are being disposed of by this common order. Two petitions had earlier been filed before this Court being Writ Petition No. 3112 of 2004 and Writ petition No. 3175 of 2004. Those petitions were filed by the employees Union and the workmen who had accepted a Voluntary retirement Scheme (VRS) under a memorandum of Settlement dated December 10, 2001. The grievance of the petitioners in those petitions was that there was short fall in payment of VRS amounts and the employees were paid less commuted amounts and monthly pensions than what was promised in the settlement dated December 10, 2001. The union had brought to the attention of the management that the commuted amount was less than 33% and even the monthly pension was also reduced disproportionately. As the matter was not resolved an industrial dispute was raised. The grievance of the petitioner was that inspite of raising the dispute the conciliation Officer had failed to take further steps and consequently a direction was sought to take up the matter in conciliation and submit failure report. After hearing the parties a division Bench of this Court observed that the conciliation Officer was not right in contending that after having accepted VRS the relationship between the employees and management had come to an end. The learned judge further observed that the grievance of the petitioners had a direct nexus with the 2001 vrs which had been accepted by them and certain benefits had been given to them and for that limited purpose they could be said to be workmen within the meaning of Industrial disputes Act. In view of that finding the learned Bench directed the Conciliation Officer to take the dispute in conciliation and submit a failure report in the event of the failure within four weeks. The State of Maharashtra on receipt of failure report was also to pass appropriate orders in accordance with law within four weeks. This order of this Court was challenged before the Supreme Court by way of Special Leave Petition. The Special Leave petition which came up for hearing on May 6, 2005 was disposed of by the Apex Court with the following observation-"by the impugned order all that the High court has done is to direct the Conciliation officer to take into consideration the dispute and file a report. But it is true that the High court has further observed that if there is failure to report, appropriate orders in accordance with law will have to be made. We do not think this observation of the High court, in any way, prevents the petitioner from taking recourse to challenge the order of reference if any either before the High: court or raise it as preliminary issue before the Industrial Tribunal as the case may be in which event the observations made by the high Court will not come in the way of the issue being decided afresh. With the; observation these special leave petitions are disposed of. "it may be noted that the S. L. Ps were disposed of on May 6, 2005. The orders of reference are dated April 12, 2005 and April 20, 2005. In other words when the S. L. Ps were pending before the Apex Court the references had already been made.

( 4 ) THE petitioner employer has come to this Court contending that there was no industrial dispute and secondly that the employees whose cause has been espoused by the Union in Writ Petition No. 1563 of 2004 and the employees who are respond

Click Here to Read the rest of this document