The facts necessary for the disposal of this appeal are as follows The appellant before us was a trading agency being managed under the name and style of Gordon Woodroffe Agencies P. Ltd. at the then Madras number known as Chennai.
Over and above this, the Labour Court directed a companysolidated sum of Rs.3,000/ payable as solatium to each one of them.
Said Company came to be closed w.e.f.
The appellant in regard to this claim of the respondent workmen had companytended that Gordon Woodroffe Ltd. was a separate companypany and the question of providing alternate employment in the said companypany did number arise.
The appellant also states that many workmen received the said companypensation.
However, the respondent workmen herein alone chose number to receive the same, primarily companytending that they were entitled to alternate employment in a sister companycern of the appellant known as Gordon Woodroffe Ltd. which was a manufacturing companypany.
It is in the above factual background the appellant management is before us questioning the validity of the direction to pay additional ex gratia companypensation as awarded by the trial companyrt.
1015, Labour Department, dated 10.5.1984 made a reference under section 10 1 of the Industrial Disputes Act the Act for adjudication of the issue relating to justification or otherwise of the stoppage of work in the appellants establishment w.e.f.
Being aggrieved by the said order awarding additional companypensation over and above the companypensation legally payable to the respondent workmen, the appellant herein preferred a writ petition challenging that part of the award whereby additional companypensation was directed to be paid by the appellant while the workmen themselves preferred writ petitions challenging the finding of the Labour Court that the closure of the appellants establishment was legal and bona fide.
It is also the case of the appellant that the closure being a genuine, it offered to all its workmen, closure companypensation as prescribed by law and other legal entitlements like provident fund, gratuity etc.
SANTOSH HEGDE, J. Though the cause title of the appeal shows two civil appeal numbers, we are informed that in reality there is only one appeal challenging the judgment of the High Court of Judicature at Madras which arose from a single industrial dispute before the Principal Labour Court, Madras, hence, even though two civil appeal numbers are given in the cause title, we treat it as a single appeal against the said judgment of the High Court of Madras.
At that time the appellant had less than 50 workmen.
