B.N.BANERJEE, J. - (1.) THIS rule is directed against an industrial award, made by the first industrial tribunal, directing the Indian Standard Wagon Co., Ltd., the petitioner -company, to pay to its workmen interim bonus for each of the years 1959 -60 and 1960 -61 at the rate of 57 days' basic wages. The workmen of the petitioner -company are represented by the Asansol iron and steel workers' union and the United iron and steel workers' union (respondents 3 and 4).
(2.) IT is necessary for me to recount in brief the circumstances under which the dispute as to bonus came to arise. Under an award made in the year 1947, under Rule 81A of the Defence of India Rules, 1939 (hereinafter referred to as the McSharpe award), the workmen of the petitioner -company became entitled to a profit -sharing bonus at the rate of two days' basic wages for each percentage of dividend declared to the ordinary shareholders of the company. The aforesaid award was said to have been made on the basis of an agreement. Although the said award came to an end by efflux of time, the terms thereof were continued under another award known as Sen -Sarkar -Mukherjee award of 1948 and were ultimately embodied in the standing orders of the petitioner -company.
(3.) FROM the year 1960, however, the workmen of the petitioner -company no longer wanted to be bound by the terms of the McSharpe award, which they considered to be Inadequate in the changed circumstances caused by passage of time. They contended, as the tribunal found, - - that ever since 1947 under the McSharpe award of 1947, baaed on a bipartite agreement, and the Sen -Sarkar -Mukherjee award of 1948, bonus has been paid by this company to its workmen as a condition of service linked up with dividend at the rate of two days' pay for each percentage of dividend declared. These awards and the bipartite agreement on which the first award is based applied not merely to the Indian Standard Wagon Co., Ltd., but also to the Indian Iron and Steel Company, Limited, and while the Indian Iron and Steel Company, Limited, increased the said rates...and while each shareholder of 1947 of the Indian Standard Wagon Co., Ltd., has got three additional free bonus shares for one share held by them since then and has thus come to have dividend for four shares as against one of 1947, irrespective of the rate of dividend, in the case of the workmen the rate of bonus was not increased at all and the claim of the union la that it should be increased four times, i.e., eight days for one per cent of dividend. This attitude on the part of the workmen raised an industrial dispute and the State Government, in exercise of its powers under Section 10 of the Industrial Disputes Act, referred the following issue for adjudication before the first industrial tribunal, viz., 'Additional bonus for 1957 -58 and 1958 -59 and bonus for 1959 -60 and 1960 -61.';