Tasmac wet for others, dry for its labourers

CHENNAI: Dr Justice Maria Clete of the Madras High Court has handed down a May Day gift to the Tasmac workers. In a lengthy judgment running into 141 pages, she had severely indicted Tasmac, a wholly owned Tamil Nadu enterprise, for its commissions, omissions and prevarications in implementing several labour welfare legislations. Imposing a fine of Rs 1 lakh on it, she had also warned that contempt action would be initiated for its consistent and deliberate disobedience of several judgments of the Madras High Court.

The judgment also sounds like a literary piece. It starts with a quote from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. The quote is attributed to the speech of Shylock who demands the return of a pound of flesh for the amount advanced. He questions the court of Venice and declares, “There is no force in the decrees of Venice. I stand for judgment: answer; shall I have it?”. Like in the play, true judgment was given to the workers of Tasmac.

The judgment also ends with a famous biblical quote attributed to Jeremiah, which admonishes the wicked, “And I will give you pastors according to mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding.”

Unlike the traditional judgments, which tersely set out the bare facts and with legal precedents giving out certain directions, Justice Maria’s judgment proceeds like a thesis covering two decades of industrial relations in the biggest state monopoly, Tasmac. She does not spare the company and calls it a 'Leviathan' that hardly cares for any legal authority.

The judgment traces the start of Tasmac as a government-owned company in 1983 and 2004, taking over the retail trade of Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) by amending the Prohibition Act, 1937, as a monopoly trade. In a lighter vein, the judgment points out the irony of the state contradicting its own commitment to prohibition under Article 47, and as a pioneer in implementing prohibition in India through the Madras Prohibition Act of 1937, now actively involved in the liquor trade by framing rules under the very same Act which imposed prohibition.

Today, being May Day, the judgment also points out an interesting episode regarding the declaration of May Day as a paid holiday for the working class in Tamil Nadu and how Tasmac was ducking the law. It was on April 30, 2010, that the Madras High Court directed Tasmac to declare May Day as a holiday for its employees in tune with the state government policy, which was made as early as 1970. However, after the judgment was delivered around 5 pm, the Tasmac moved the division bench and obtained an interim stay at 6 pm. May 1, 2010, was, as usual, a working day and when the rest of the working class was celebrating it, Tasmac employees were busy selling IMFL bottles. But the public criticism led the state to declare May Day a holiday for Tasmac, not on account of any labour laws, as enjoyed by other workers, but (cleverly labelled) as a dry day. What a way to circumvent labour legislation is beyond comprehension.

Tasmac has a substantial workforce of loading, unloading, transport, security and godown staff who have been engaged by MLAs and local 'dadas', and at the top, many brought on deputation from revenue, excise and police departments. There are only about 24,000 employees in its sales outlets. Normally, a shop that sells a product will be brought under the Tamil Nadu Shops and Establishments Act, 1947, concerning working hours and shop sale hours. Tasmac claims it is exempt from the Act as a state-owned undertaking. By this, it can expand or shrink the total working hours without any legal restrictions.

When several Tasmac shop employees were arbitrarily dismissed for alleged misconduct, no proper enquiries were conducted, nor was the truth established before the punishment. The High Court, in several writ petitions, set aside those orders and directed Tasmac to conduct proper enquiries. Tired of such directions, the court in 2010 observed that Tasmac was not following the Industrial Employment (Standing Orders) Act, 1946, which mandatorily applies to them and that if those model standing orders framed by the government are followed, many of the arbitrary dismissals will come to an end (Sivakumar, 2010).

This decision was consistently followed by several judges of the High Court, though the orders were never followed or implemented by Tasmac. According to Tasmac, each order of the court “is like a rail ticket, good for the day and good for the trip”, as said by Potter Stewart, a US Supreme Court judge. Suddenly, on certain “advice from a labour expert”, a code was introduced in 2014 by which spot fines, recovery of shortage and punishment transfers can be made by their officers. The legal sanctity of the code was never explained, though in a few cases, some judges did not find anything wrong in applying the code.

More important was Tasmac claiming a certain source of power from the Prohibition Act, 1937, because under the Act in Section 17(c), Tasmac is mentioned as an entity exclusively to deal with retail trade in IMFL. Little did it realise that neither the Act nor its rules enable even the state government to frame rules dealing with labour, since there are special labour enactments to deal with the subject of industrial relations.

It also went to the ridiculous extent of collecting GST charges from the employees when they were forced to pay back the shortage and fines collected from the workers. When the GST collection was held to be bad by the high court, immediate appeals were filed by Tasmac, and a stay was obtained.

It was under these circumstances that a trade union went before the Labour Commissioner seeking intervention, holding that the introduction of the code justifying arbitrary actions was beyond the scope of the Standing Orders Act. However, the Labour Commissioner held that the Standing Orders Act will apply to Tasmac (much to its discomfort) but held that the code will be supplemental. It was this order that was challenged by a trade union affiliated with CITU.

This case became the base for Dr Justice Maria Clete to delve into the issue more deeply and list out all the brazen acts indulged by Tasmac. After a thorough exposure of their stand and continuously supported by four different Advocate Generals belonging to different political regimes the learned judge held that the Code 2014 has no legs to stand and Tasmac should obey all the previous orders of the High Court and implement the Standing Orders Act failing which they may be liable for contempt and penal action. Only to punish the intransigent stand of Tasmac, a cost of Rs 1 lakh was imposed to be paid to the trade union, which has been fighting this cause for years.

Let Tasmac realise that it can’t have a dry day only for the workers.

— The writer is a retired judge of the Madras High Court