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220 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
If registration under the Act of 1926 gives the unions the right to represent, where is the necessity of requiring further registration under this Bill ? If a union registered under the Act of 1926 is competent to send members as representatives of the whole labour body to speak in this House, to vote in this House, where is the necessity of requiring registration under this Bill ? I should like to have an answer to that question later on. What the Bill does is a very queer thing, which again I am not able to understand. A union registered under the Act of 1926 will not have, under the House to realise the anomaly of the position. A union registered under the Act of
1926, while it is competent enough to represent workers in the Legislature, is not competent under this Bill to represent labour before the Conciliator. Why is this anomaly ? The Bill does not merely create an anomaly. I say it takes away a privilege from the unions which are registered under the Act of 1926.
In this connection, I should like to draw the attention of the House to what used to take place under the provisions of the Bombay Act of 1934. When conciliation proceedings started, members who know the provisions of that Act will remember, under section 9 the labourers were represented by delegates. That was the provision in that Act. This is the wording of section 9 :
“On receipt of notice under section 8, the parties to a trade dispute shall within the time specified in the notice or within such time as may be fixed by the Conciliator in this behalf, appoint delegates in such manner as the Conciliator may direct.”
Therefore, labour, in conciliation proceedings under the Act of 1934, was represented by delegates. How were these delegates chosen ? Who were the parties who were entitled to choose those delegates to represent labour before the Conciliator, under the Act of 1934 ? Sir, I have gone to the rules made under this Act, and a reference to the rules will show that the parties who were entitled to elect delegates were the registered trade unions, the unions registered under the Trade Disputes Act of 1926. That is provided by rule 3 of the rules made under the Bombay Act of 1934. It is, therefore, clearly established that up to this moment a union which was registered under the 1926 Act of the Central Legislature, by reason of the fact that it was a corporation, had the right to represent workers in all places and at all junctions. Constitutionally, by the Government of India Act of 1935, they have been given the right to represent labour in the Legislatures, and the Bombay Act of 1934 specifically recognised that the trade unions registered under that Act, namely, the Bombay Act of 1934, were the only bodies entitled to send delegates before a conciliator. Sir, my first complaint is that this Bill takes away a valuable right which the unions had and gives it to whom ? It gives it to slave unions, as I am going presently to show. If it was given to free unions, I would not mind at all. Then, Sir, why is it—this is an important point to understand—why is it that the unions registered under this Bill are also required to be registered under the Central