Tribunal orders sugar mill to regularise 149 workers

Chennai: The Industrial Tribunal, Chennai has directed management of the Cooperative Sugar Mill, Tirupattur, Vellore district to regularise the service of 149 contract workers, who have been serving in the plant for well over three decades.
When a petition filed by N.M.R. Employees Union, Tiruppathur Cooperative Sugar Mills, Vellore District, represented by its secretary, came up for hearing, the presiding officer A. Kanthakumar passed a decree in favour of the union.

The petitioner submitted that members of the union have been serving as non-muster roll (NMR) Workers continuously since 1978. However, their services had not been regularised and they were not absorbed as regular employees.
In view of their temporary and adhoc status for the past more than 30 years, they have also apprehended that their services would be terminated at any time. A petition was filed before Labour Officer, Vellore on July 12, 2012.

After management refused to accept the demand, the Labour Officer filed Conciliation Failure Report before the government. The petitioner said keeping them as ad-hoc workers for more than 30 years was highly arbitrary and unjustified and amounts to unfair labour practice.  

In its reply, the mill management stated that it was governed by bye-laws, which contemplates recruitment of eligible candidates to the notified vacancies and posts in a manner contemplated in rules/bylaws. Many members of the Union were regularised. The union members failed in eligibility criteria.

The presiding officer A. Kanthakumar said, “I hope and trust, the Government which is the guardian of the people and is obliged under Article 38 of the Constitution to secure a social order for the promotions of welfare of the people and to eliminate inequalities in status, will endeavour to give maximum posts even at the first stage of absorption, and do the same in the same spirit for creating additional posts after enquiry”.

The union members and their families entirely depend on this employment only for more than 30 years and they have no other source of income.  Passing an order in favour of the petitioner, the presiding officer A. Kanthakumar said that this court holds the view that the demand of the petitioner union is reasonable and justified.

Allow mills to produce ethanol: Employees union

A sugar mill employee's union has demanded that the government allow the production of ethanol and bio fertilisers in sugar mills to increase the profitability of the mills.

In an affidavit submitted by Secretary, N.M.R. Employees Union, Tiruppathur Cooperative Sugar Mills, Vellore District to the Industrial Tribunal, the union recommended that the management of the sugar mills ferment ethanol and produce bio fertilisers in sugar mills.

The union has stated that the State has 14 cooperative sugar mills and they were functioning under the administrative control of the Commissioner of Sugars, Chennai. The cane farmers were shareholders in the mills. Initially, the Crushing capacity of the mills was 2.29 lakh tonnes per year. As the mills reached their optimum level, the crushing capacity was increased gradually to 3.19 lakh tonnes per year.

Explaining the power the government wields over the  mills, the union has stated that the entire process, from the establishment of factory, its production, marketing and fixing prices for the sugarcane and the price of the end product sugar is determined by the Central Government and the State Government under the power vested under Madras Sugar Factories Control Act 1949 and Sugarcane control Order 1966.

The union said neither individual factories nor the cane growers had any role to play in the production and marketing. The registered cane growers are prohibited from selling the sugarcane produced by them to others.

The union has recommended that the sugar mills can make profit, if they were managed by effective management utilising the plants to their optimum  and by production of by products like ethanol, bio-fertilisers and by establishing power generation plants in the sugar mills. No action has been taken in this aspect to make the existing mills financially viable and profitable, the Union has added.