P.Chakravartti, C.J. - (1.) The nine appellants are registered and licensed tevedores, carrying on business in the Fort of Calcutta. Besides them, there are nineteen other stevedores, carrying on business at the same port. The appellants are memhers of a body, called the Calcutta Stevedores Association, whereas fourteen of the other nineteen stevedores are members of a body, called the Master Stevedores Association. The remaining five are unattached.
(2.) The work of a Stevedore consists in loading and unloading ships and on occasions in preparing a vessel for the reception or discharge of cargo. Such work requires the aid of human labour. Naturally, a large body of men, capable of offering such labour, congregate at ports where ships call, but it is in the nature of things impossible that they should be able to get regular employment unless the work is controlled and equitably distributed. In order that stevedoring work may be available, there must be ships to load or unload, but no one can expect ships to call at any particular port with anything like regularity, nor can it be expected that the tonnage of the ships which actually call will be sufficient to provide employment for all the dock labour seeking work. The prospect of getting employment is thus always uncertain and this uncertainty was causing some dissatisfaction among the labourers and occasionally some dislocation of work.
(3.) In those circumstances, the Legislature intervened and in the year 1948 enacted a statute, called the Dock Workers (Regulation of Employment) Act 1948, in order to provide for the regulation of the employment of dock workers. The statute itself was a very slender piece of legislation consisting of only seven sections and, in the main it only provided for the training of schemes for each port with a view to regulating the recruitment and employment of dock workers and taking suitable measures for providing them with work on fair wages and securing their health and safety. Section 3 of the Act enumerated the matters for which a scheme might provide and Section 4 laid down that Government might by notification in the Gazette make one or more schemes for a port or group of ports and amend or revoke such schemes from time to time. One of the matters for which a scheme might provide was the regulation of the employment of dock workers, whether registered or not, and the terms and conditions of their employment, including rates of remuneration. Another matter was the manner in which the cost of operating the scheme was to be defrayed.;