When wages are standardized by an award, it is not open to the employer to pay to the employee higher wages than those fixed in the award.

CHAGLA, C.J.:- 168 employees of the Ahmedabad Spinning and Manufacturing Company, Ltd., which is represented by its manager as opponent No.1, filed an application before the Authority under the Payment of Wages Act alleging that wages were due to them from 29-12-1953 to 10-1-1954, amounting in all to Rs.114. The contention of the employees was that they were each attending to four looms in the mills, that they had been paid on a certain basis and that their wages had been illegally reduced by the mills and their proper wages had not been paid to them.

The Authority gave a direction to the mills to pay the amount claimed. The mills went in appeal to the District Court and the learned Extra Assistant Judge at Ahmedabad has reversed the decision of the Authority and the employees through the General Secretary of the Mill Mazdoor Mandal, of which they are members, have come on this petition challenging that decision.

2. Now, it appears that an award was made in 1948 in a dispute between the Ahmedabad Millowners Association and the Textile Labour Association by which the rates of various textile workers were standardised, and among the wages that were standardised were the wages of this type of workers. The mills in question started a weaving department only in 1951 and they introduced the four loom system, and the wages that they paid to these workers were higher than the wages fixed under this award. The mills subsequently gave notice reducing the wages of these workers so as to conform to the wages laid down under the award, and the contention of the workers was that the mills were liable to pay to them their contractual wages even though that wage may be higher than the wage fixed by the award. It is not suggested by Mr. Tarkunde on behalf of the petitioners that the wages which the employees are claiming and in respect of which the Authority under the Payment of Wages Act has made an order are not higher than the wages fixed under the award, but Mr. Tarkundes contention is that there is nothing in the labour legislation which prevents an employer from paying higher wages than the wages fixed under the award. The only obligation upon the employer is that he cannot pay wages which are lower than the wages fixed by the award.

It is said that if an employer pays wages which are higher than the wages fixed under the award, the proper procedure he must follow is to give a notice of a change to the employee under S.42(1), Bombay Industrial Relations Act, 1946, but it is not open to him, without complying with the procedure laid down in S.42(1), to make an alteration in the wages payable to the employees. Mr. Tarkunde points out that payment of wages is an industrial matter specified in Sch. II to the Act and therefore it was obligatory on the employer under S.42(1) to effect a change in respect of that industrial matter only in accordance with the procedure laid down in that section.

3. As against that it is pointed out that the award has standardised certain wages and it was not open to the employer to pay a wage different from the standardised wage. If he were to do so, he would be committing an offence under the Bombay Industrial Relations Act, 1946, and he would be liable to be prosecuted.

4. Now, under S.46(3) no employer shall make any such change in contravention of the terms of a settlement, effective award, registered agreement or effective order or decision of a wage Board; and S.47 makes it incumbent upon the employer to comply with any change which is fixed by any decision or order of a wage Board, Labour Court or the Industrial Court; and S.106(1) provides for a penalty which the employer may be subjected to if he makes an illegal change.

Therefore, the contention of the employer is that it was incumbent upon him to give effect to the provision of the award with regard to wages, that he could not pay wages different from the wages settled under the award, and if he were not to carry out the provision of the award, he