LABOUR POLICY OF GOVERNMENT OF INDIA 249
of insubordination of misconduct which calls for disciplinary action the employer may dismiss his employee without obtaining the permission of the tribunal. To that there is undoubtedly one exception and that exception is that in case of insubordination or misconduct which calls for disciplinary action the employer may dismiss his employee without obtaining the permission of the tribunal. Now, Sir, I do not think that this particular provision which permits an employer to get rid of an employee who has misconducted himself or who is insubordinate can be a ground for complaint.
N. M. Joshi: Who is to judge ?
The Honourable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar : I should like to ask Mr. Joshi, who judges in ordinary cases where the Tribunal does not become operative ? In the way in which our industry is organised it is the employer who has rightly or wrongly the right to dismiss a worker whom he thinks is of no service to him. Therefore I think there is no point in that. But what I wanted to inform the House, and Mr. Joshi particularly, is that in order that there may be no abuse of this provision we have amended the Ordinance in two important particulars. The first thing that we did and that was done expressly at the desire of Mr. Joshi was to constitute advisory committees to be associated with the tribunal. On these advisory committees there are representatives of labour, and I have not the slightest doubt that with the help of these advisory committees, constituted as they are, they will be able to bring to the attention of the Tribunal such cases which they have reason to believe are due to victimisation.
The second and the most important step which has now been taken is this. We have now issued an order calling upon the Chairman of the Tribunal to place on record his reasons for not allowing an employee to resign or to quit his job. This is a provision which we have borrowed from the Criminal Procedure Code, so that at the centre of the Government it would be possible for us to know whether there were legitimate and proper grounds, for the Chairman of the Tribunal not permitting an employee to resign his job.
Sir, Mr. Joshi then proceeded to point out that the conditions in coal mines were not very satisfactory. I do not claim that the conditions are ideal but I do like to say that the Labour Department has taken definite and quite large steps to bring about better conditions in coal mines.