Krishna Iyer, J. - (1.) A free press can summon its flaming vigour only if its journalistic and non-journalistic wings go into full swing with courage and contentment to make the printed end product that issues daily from the machine, so that the office of education and information the Fourth Estate must perform does not suffer. The community itself has vital concern in the working conditions of the dual human groups whose invisible work is crystallised daily and moved into mass circulation. In a democracy, news media and the men behind have a special value. Therefore, a few legislative and non-legislative measures have taken care of the working conditions of the journalists and non journalists. We are concerned here with non-journalists and that portion of an award which has conferred standardised gratuity benefit on them.
(2.) The importance of the enthusiasm, integrity and thoroughness of the silent army, which speaks daily in every issue of a newspaper, once underscored, the necessity for a square economic deal to these hands argues itself. A Free Press serves the nation successfully when it serves its family fairly. Even an army marches on its stomach. And retirement benefits bear upon anxiety for the aging future in this mortal world and impact upon contentment in the working life. Such is the law of the tenses and human lot. Pressmen are no exception.
(3.) This national concern quickened the Government to make a reference to the Industrial Tribunal of certain questions of economic justice concerning nonjournalist employees. The issues between leading members of the Press Proprietariat and the non-journalist Proletariat were spelt out for adjudication in a Reference and lack of clarity in its drafting has led to the bone of contention in this appeal. Perfunctory draftsmanship has a great potential for creating disputes even where there are none. This is Government"s unwitting contribution to the present litigation! The National Tribunal, assisted by considerable submissions from learned counsel, produced a massive award covering many topics, including gratuity, and all but one establishment viz., the appellant, have fallen in line and left the award unchallenged. The broad approach of the Tribunal vis-a-vis gratuity is coloured by social justice and informed by indicia gathered from this Court"s dicta. Industrial jurisprudence is not static, rigid or textually cold but dynamic, burgeoning and warm with life. It answers in emphatic negative the biblical interrogation:What man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will given him a stone The Industrial Tribunals of India, in areas unoccupied by precise block letter law, go by the constitutional mandate of social justice in the claims of the "little people." That touchstone led to the award which, inter alia, granted gratuity to non-journalists altho" the positive evidence was little and the guidelines faint. The compass of the acute dispute in this appeal is the very jurisdiction of the tribunal to pronounce upon "gratuity," the ground urged being that it falls outside the reference itself.;