z:\ ambedkar\vol-02\vol2-04.indd MK SJ+YS 21-9-2013/YS-8-11-2013 215
ON THE INDUSTRIAL DISPUTES BILL 215
such a nature and on so extensive a scale as to be calculated to be interfering with the supply and distribution ………. .”
I desire to draw the attention of the House to these particular words :
“of food, water, fuel or light or with means of locomotion, to deprive the community or any single portion of the community of the essential services ……. .”
“His Majesty may, by proclamation declare that a state of emergency exists.”
Then section 2 says :
“Where a proclamation of emergency has been made, and so long as the proclamation is in force, it shall be lawful for His Majesty’s Court, to make regulations for securing the essentials of life to the community, and these regulations may confer or impose on a ……. . Government ……. . such powers and duties as His Majesty may deem necessary ……. .”
The point to bear in mind is that all this is confined to cases of essential to public safety and life of the community. This has always been the view taken, that if you want to restrict the right to strike and to make it illegal, then you must do it only in relation to services on which the sustenance of the life of the community depends. Now, it is obvious that this Bill extends to every trade and every industry. I do not wish to say anything with the object of making fun, but I should like to illustrate my point by saying that, supposing tomorrow the Indian women—I hope they do not—adopt the fashion of painting their lips and some manufacturer who had a nose for money started an industry for making lip-sticks for supplying their needs, and if under this Act the workers went on strike, its provisions would fall upon their head like the sword of Damocles. Can anybody seriously maintain that the lip-stick industry is essential to life, that the right to strike should be curtailed because some women are deprived of the pleasure of having the usual paint on their lips ? Sir, this Government has not only let go by the board the attitude that it took in 1929, of restricting the penalty to strikes in social security services, but they have beaten the bureaucracy by going beyond the provisions of the Act of 1929. The bureaucracy had at least the sense, if I may say so, the responsibility, to realise that the right to strike was so important that it should not be penalised beyond the four corners of what was covered by public security ; and here is a Bill which, I would like to repeat, would make a strike in the lip-stick industry penal.
All this, for what? What are we to gain by all these trials and tribulations which they are trying to impose upon these poor workmen ? The result, as I see, is to wait at the table of some gentlemen, whom the Bill calls the conciliator, for 4 months and 25 days. Beyond that I see nothing. The Honourable the Home Minister said that one of the reasons why this Bill has been introduced was because the State was taking upon its own shoulders to collective bargaining. I think he said something to that effect. If I am wrong, I hope he will correct me.