THE FACTORIES (SECOND AMENDMENT) BILL 209
voluntarily by an employer and the Government is satisfied of its efficacy, Government has been giving power to exempt a factory from the obligations in this Act. I find that the position in Great Britain is also similar in this matter. Under the British system, there is a Holidays with Pay Act of 1938 and 2,300,000 people are covered by it. The rest of them, namely, 5 millions, get it under voluntary agreement, not under the Act and 4,000,700 get under what is called a long-standing custom.
Sir Cowasjee Jehangir : Where is the provision whereby an employer can postpone giving that leave ?
The Honourable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar : I am coming to that. Now, Sir, one other point I wanted to deal with, as I said, was this compulsory versus voluntary.
The other point that was raised by my friend Prof. Ranga and also by Mr. Chettiar was that we have made no specific provision against an employer entering into an unfair practice whereby he would discharge an employee in order to prevent him from earning his holiday. To that point I had referred in my opening speech when I made the motion and I said that while Government is aware that certain practices may develop, Government does not think that they ought to take any action straightway. Government would prefer to wait and watch and see which side resorts to what sort of stratagem in order to over-reach the other side. But, as I said if there is a strong feeling on the point and those who represent labour are able to convince the Select Committee that it is necessary straightway to have a provision entered into the Act itself to prevent any such practices, it will be open to them to move and get it through. Government does not regard that as a matter of principle and will not stand in the way of the thing being done in the Select Committee.
The other point which has been raised is whether this question of leave should be entirely made dependent upon the wishes of the employee, namely, that the employee should have a right to determine from what date and at what time he should exercise his holiday. Now, we have deliberately made no provision in the Bill for that and we have left it to the Provincial Governments to make rules to regulate what should be done with regard to that particular point. I think it would be desirable in an experiment of this kind not to tie down everything