JUDGMENT

KRISHNA IYER, J. (for himself and D. A. Desai J.) :— Every litigation has a moral and, these appeals have many, the foremost being that the economics of law is the essence of labour jurisprudence.

The case in a nutshell.

2. An affluent Magement and an indigent work force are the two wings of the Gujarat Steel Tubes Ltd. which manufactures steel tubes in the outskirts of Ahmedabad city and is scarred by an industrial dispute resulting in these appeals. This industry, started in 1960, went into production since 1964 and waggled from infancy to adulthood with smiling profits and growling workers, punctuated by smoldering demands, strikes and settlements, until there brewed a confrontation culminating in a head-on collision following upon certain unhappy happenings. A total strike ensued, whose chain reaction was a wholesale termination of all the employees, followed by fresh recruitment of workmen, de facto breakdown of the strike and dispute over restoration of the removed workmen. This cataclysmic episode and its sequel formed the basis of a Section 10A arbitration and award, a writ petition and judgment, inevitably spiralling up to this Court in two appeals - one by the Mana