Public employers have an obligation to provide permanent employment to workers engaged in permanent jobs, even if they were initially engaged through a contractor. The Contract Labour (Regulation & Abolition) Act, 1970 does not apply in cases where there is no contractor involved.

This is a writ petition by some 80 workmen who have been engaged in the distribution of Coke Breeze, for obtaining permanent employment as regular employees of the respondent No. 2.

2. The writ application was filed in 1988.

3. By that time these workers had worked for six years. They obtained a favourable interim order on a contested bearing. That order is still operating now. No appeal was preferred therefrom.

4. The workers are, therefore, still in employment.

5. Before the contested hearing which took place on this occasion before me, the writ petitioners had obtained an ex parte order in their favour which was passed by me earlier, giving the shortest of reasons why the workers should be absorbed. Rule was made absolute as prayed for.

6. An application for setting aside of the ex parte order was made but dismissed by me. Appeals were preferred. The appeals succeeded. On the direction given by the Court of appeal the affidavit-in-opposition has at last come 10 years after filing of the writ.

7. An affidavit-in-reply has also been filed. The matter this time has not gone ex parte but long arguments have been made.

8. Although in many decisions the Supreme Court has again and again stressed the extreme desirability of giving reasons for decisions, yet to my knowledge there is no reasoned decision of a Division Bench of this Court or of the Supreme Court yet which lays down that an order passed by a Judge taking a Single Bench of the High Court can be set aside only on the ground that the order is not a reasoned one. But because of the desirability of giving reasons, however short, one or two sentences were said even in my earlier ex parte order. However, that matter is no longer of any importance today.

9. The petitioners prayed for permanent absorption on the principal of law which is, or at least should be, well known by now that, in the case of public employers the principle is that if the job is a permanent one then the employment should also be a permanent one. The Court frowns upon the filling up the permanent job vacancies by public employers on a casual basis, thus giving permanent workers no permanent basis of employment or security.

10. In support of this proposition the writ petitioners relied on certain cases. The first is (1) Hussainbhai's case reported at AIR 1978 SC 1410. Reference was thereafter made to the cases reported at (2) AIR 1967 SC 512, Jaswant Sugar Mills and in (3) AIR 1987 SC 2342, Daily Rated Casual Labour.

11. For the respondents these cages were sought to be distinguished on the basis that the workers came to the Court first availing themselves of the remedies provided under the Industrial Disputes Act. It was said on behalf of the respondents that if no dispute is raised by the State, there is no question of reinstatement decided upon by the Labour Court or the Industrial Tribunal then the Writ Court cannot be approached as the first Court.

12. In my opinion, this is not a point of sound distinction. It has been said in the cases above that "If the livelihood of the workmen substantially depends on labour rendered to produce goods and services for the benefit and satisfaction of an enterprise, the absence of direct relationship or the presence of dubious intermediaries or the make believe trappings of attachment from the Management cannot snap the real-live bond. The story may vary but the inference defies ingenuity. The liability cannot be shaken off (Hussainbhai-Paragraph 6) :-

"The distinction between a permanent workman engaged on work of a permanent nature and a temporary workman engaged on work of a permanent nature is in the fact that a temporary workman is engaged to fill in a temporary need of extra hands of permanent jobs ...By such device it would be possible for the employer to prevent any workman from becoming permanent, even though the work on which he is engaged lasts throughout the year and is in its nature permanent." (Paragraph 4 of Jaswant Sugar Mills) : "It is urged that the St