The main legal point established in the judgment is the requirement for unbroken payments for a sufficiently long period, the exclusion of payments made out of bounty, and the connection with festivals to infer an implied condition of service for bonus.

1. The petitioners in this case are the workmen of the Tile Factory at Feroke, under the employment of the 2nd respondent and are represented by the Secretary of Tile Workers' Union. On behalf of the workmen, the Union raised an industrial dispute regarding the payment of the bonus for the year 1960 and other matters and the Government of Kerala referred the dispute for adjudication to the 1st respondent.

2. The Union by its written statement claimed that the payment of bonus had ripened into an implied condition of the contract of employment as from the very beginning of the working of the company, the workers were paid bonus regularly at the time of Vishu every year. The 2nd respondent controverted this allegation and contended that bonus was never paid by the Management except out of profit and that it paid bonus in certain years of loss purely as a matter of bounty, to purchase goodwill of the workmen and to maintain industrial peace.

3. The 1st respondent came to the conclusion that the workers were not entitled to bonus as an implied condition of service and dismissed their claim for the same. It is to quash this part of the award that this writ petition has been filed by the workers.

4. The question that arises for consideration is whether award of the Tribunal is vitiated by any error of law apparent on the face of the record. The issue referred for adjudication and with which 1 am concerned in this petition is whether the workers were entitled to bonus for the year 1960 on the basis of an implied condition of service. In the written statement filed by the Union, bonus was claimed as an implied condition of the contract of employment. The contention of the Union was that from the very beginning of the working of the Company the workmen have been paid bonus at the time of Vishu every year till 1959 and that this unbroken payment over the years evidences the existence of an obligation to pay bonus as an implied condition of service. In 1959 the management refused to pay bonus and that was the subject matter of Arbitration Reference 4 of 1960. In the award passed in that reference a copy of which is marked as Ext. M. 22 in this case it was found that the rate of payment of bonus to the workers from 1951 to 1958 was not uniform and as the payments were not at a uniform rate in these years no inference could be drawn than the payment of bonus has become customary in the establishment. It may be noted that the claim put forward by the Union at that time was that bonus was payable as a matter of custom. The present claim for 25 per cent of the basic wages as bonus is advanced on the basis that it has become an implied term of the conditions of service. The management denied the allegation of the Union that bonus was payable as an implied condition of the contract of employment. The case of the management is that it paid bonus for 1953 & 1954, which were admittedly years in which the management incurred loss purely out of bounty to purchase the goodwill of the workers and for maintaining industrial peace. The management contended that the period during which bonus was paid was not long enough to warrant an inference as to its obligation to pay the same in connection with Vishu as an implied condition of service. The Tribunal came to the conclusion that there was no implied condition of service for payment of bonus to the workers. In coming to this conclusion the Tribunal analysed the oral and documentary evidence and found that bonuses were paid from 1951 to 1958, out of which 1953, 1954, 1956 & 1958 were years in which the management incurred loss, that the payments in 1953 & 1954 were ex gratia payments, and that therefore the contention of the workers that the claim for payment of bonus had ripened into an implied condition of the contract of employment was not substantiated. It was on the basis of this finding that the Tribunal came to the conclusion that there was no implied term in the contract of service in the