The appellant, Premium Transmission Private Limited, makes transmission engineering products at its Aurangabad plant. On the Management’s account, its regular and perennial manufacturing work was carried out by 118 trained permanent employees, while ancillary work was handed off to two labour contractors registered under the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970 (“CLRA”), namely Om Sai Manpower Services Pvt. Ltd. and Aurangabad Multi Services.
The workers supplied through these contractors saw things very differently. Represented by the Aurangabad Mazdoor Union, they said the contracts were “sham, bogus and camouflaged,” and that they were, for all practical purposes, employees of the Management. Their demands followed from that: a place on the muster roll, classification as permanent workmen, and wages matching the highest-paid workers doing comparable work.
Instead of raising these demands with the Management first, the Union went to the Conciliation Officer directly on June 11, 2019, worried that changes to the contractual arrangement would cost the workers their engagement. The Conciliation Officer admitted the matter that same day. Conciliation dragged on until January 21, 2020 without any settlement, and on January 28, 2020, the Deputy Labour Commissioner referred the dispute to the Industrial Court at Aurangabad under Sections 10(1) and 12(5) of the ID Act.
The Management took this reference to the Bombay High Court, arguing that no valid industrial dispute existed, the Union had never put a demand to the Management and been refused, and in any case no employer-employee relationship existed between the Management and workers supplied by independent, licensed contractors. The High Court disagreed and upheld the reference. The Management appealed to the Supreme Court, and a connected appeal, arising out of a complaint the workers filed after the Management stopped engaging them while the reference was still pending, was heard and decided at the same time.
