The Supreme Court has ruled that the employers should realise their social obligations towards the have-not’s of society, especially unprotected workers.

The apex court upheld the judgement of the full bench of the Bombay High Court which held that under Section 2(11) of The Maharashtra Mathadi, Hamal and Other Manual Workers (Regulation of Employment and Welfare) Act, 1969 unprotected workers meant every manual workers engaged in any scheduled employment, irrespective of whether they were protected by other labour legislation.

A bench comprising Justices Tarun Chatterjee and V S Sirpurkar, while dismissing the appeals of several industrial houses, noted that this legislation covered those poor workmen, who were neither organised to be in a position to bargain with the employer nor with any compelling bargaining power.

‘They were mostly dependent upon the toliwalas and mukdams. They were not certain that if they would get the work every day. They were also not sure that they would work only for one employer in a day. Every day was a challenge to these poor workmen. It was with this idea that the Maharashtra Mathadi and Unprotected Labour Board were created under Section 6 of the Mathadi Act.’ Justice Sirpurkar writing the 71-page judgement for the bench noted,’ in these days when Nobel laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh is advocating the theory of social business as against the business to earn maximum profit, it would be better if the employers could realise their social obligations, more particularly to the have-nots of the society.

UNI