1. DECISION MAHMOOD AHMAD SOOFI (CHAIRMAN).-The petitioner complainant Muhammad Bilal (the son of Muhammad Amin) has instituted this complaint under Standing Order 18(b) of the West Pakistan Industrial and Com--mercial Employment (Standing Orders) Ordinance, 1968, against the respondent i.e. The Managing Director, National Silk & Rayon Mills Limited, Lahore Road, Lyallpur. In this application the petitioner has asserted that he had been in the employment of the respondent for period of approximately eleven years. During that period no charge-sheet, warning or show- cause notice was ever communicated to the petitioner by the respondent and the petitioner's performance of his work was also found to be satisfactory. Subsequently the employees of the respondent established a Trade Union fur protecting themselves m the allegedly oppressive activities of their employer. The petitioner participated in the organisation of that Union. The respondent is reported to have then sought to dissuade the petitioner Muhammad Bilal and his fellow employees from pursuing their Trade Union activities on pain of dire consequences.
2. Nevertheless, neither the petitioner nor his fellow-Workers yielded to the pressure that was allegedly brought to bear upon them by the respondent. On the other hand, the work and record of the petitioner was on his own showing, spotless. The respondent is said to have begun to harass the petitioner by leveling groundless charges against him. Eventually a charge-sheet containing a charge regarding slackness in the per--formance of duties was communicated to the petitioner.
3. No enquiry was made into those charges nor was the petitioner afforded any opportunity of defending himself against those charges. On the date 29th July 1970, the petitioner according to his own showing, was unanimously nominated as the Vice-President of a Union whose name has not been mentioned by the petitioner under consideration. On the date 2nd August 1970, written information was sent by registered post by the respondent to the petitioner informing the latter of his dismissal from the respondent's service. The petitioner then sent a notice under Standing Order 18(b) of the West Pakistan Industrial and Commercial Employment (Standing Orders) Ordinance, 1968, to the respondent, to which no reply was sent. In view of all the above-mentioned facts the petitioner-complainant has prayed that this Court might order the respondent to re-instate him in service immediately and to pay him all the emoluments that have fallen due to him with effect from the date of the petitioner's dismissal.
4. A reply to the petitioner's complaint was filed in this Court on behalf of the respondent by Ch. Altaf Hussain, Advocate. In this reply three preliminary objections were advanced by the respondent. The first objection was to the effect that Standing Order 18 of the Schedule to the West Pakistan Industrial and Commercial Employment (Standing Orders) Ordinance, 1968, had been repealed by section 34 of the Industrial Relations Ordinance, 1969, as amended by Ordinance XIX of 1970. It was also maintained by the respondent that Standing Order 18 was void to the extent of its repugnancy to the provisions of section 34 of the Industrial Relations Ordinance, 1969, in view of the contents of Article 134 of the Constitution of Pakistan, 1962. As far as this objection of the respondent is concerned, I find myself unable to concur with it. This Labour Court as such has no jurisdiction for inquiring into and determining purely constitutional questions. However, I9 am emphatically of the opinion that there is not the slightest justification for the contention that Standing Order 18 of the West Pakistan Industrial and Commercial Employment (Standing Orders) Ordinance, 1968 has been repealed by section 34 of the Industrial Relations Ordinance, 1969 as amended by the Industrial Relations Amendment Ordinance, 1970. After its amendment during the month of October 1970, section 34 of the Industrial Relations Amendment Ordinance, 1970 is couched in the following terms:- "Application to Labour Court.-Any collective bargaining agent or any employer or workman may apply to the Labour Court for the enforcement of any right guaranteed or secured to it or him by or under any law or any award or settlement "in the above-cited provisions of section 34 of the Industrial Ordinance, 1969, as amended by Industrial Relations Amendment Ordinance, 1970, an explicit reference has been made to the power of every Labour Court for enforcement of any right guaranteed or secured to any party by or under any law. The expression `any law" in this context cannot reasonably be construed to avert exclusively to the provisions of the Industrial Relations Ordinance, 1969 and to exclude all the provisions of Standing Order 18 of the West Pakistan Industrial and Commercial Employment (Standing Orders) Ordinance, 1968. As a matter of fact the West Pakistan Industrial and Commercial Employment (Standing Orders) Ordinance, 1968, is a provincial Statute that has not been repealed in the least degree by any amending law enacted so far. The first preliminary objection of the respondent is, therefore, rejected.
5. Now I may proceed to examine the second objection urged by the respondent against the petitioner's complaint under considera--tion. This objection is to the effect that since the petitioner is not a workman within the definition of that term as set forth in the West Pakistan Industrial and Commercial Employment (Standing Orders) Ordinance, 1968, therefore, the provisions of Standing Order 18 are not applicable to this case. It is clear from the wording of this objection that it contradicts the substance of the respondent's first objection. Nevertheless the second objections seem to me to be a valid one by itself because of the facts expounded below. , I have heard the detailed arguments of the petitioner Muhammad Bilal himself on the date 18-1- 1971 and have also heard the counter-arguments of the respondent counsel on the same date. The documents filed by the respondent's counsel have also been examined by me minutely. It is a revealing circumstance that the petitioner Muhammad Bilal has not cared to specify in the body of his complaint under consideration the exact nature of the duties that he was performing when he was in the service of the respondent. The petitioner has also neglected to mention in his complaint the exact date with effect from which he was first employed by the respon--dent and the capacity in which he was employed. It is manifestly the duty of a complainant to inform the Court of all the important facts on which his case purports to rest. In the present case the petitioner-complainant Muhammad Bilal has failed to bring to the notice of this Labour Court any specific indisputable facts froth, which it could reasonably be inferred by this Court that the said petitioner was performing any skilled or unskilled, manual or clerical labour for hire or reward when the petitioner was employed by the respondent. There is, therefore, no material on the record to warrant the belief that the petitioner Muhammad Bilal was ever .a workman the legal sense of that term as enunciated in section 2(i) the West Pakistan Industrial and Commercial Employment (Standing Orders) Ordinance, 1968. The respondent's counsel has, however, drawn my attention to the fact that the petitioner Muhammad Bilal was performing the duties of a Cost. Assistant employed or a monthly salary at the the when the petitioner was dismissed from the respondent's service. The petitioner himself has neither indicated his agreement with this statement of a fact nor his disagreement but has chosen to maintain a mysterious kind of silence in regard to this basic question in any case it is sufficient to remark here that an accountant who receives a monthly salary from any industrial or commercial establishment cannot be deemed to belong to the category of workmen as defined in section 2 (i) of the West Pakistan Industrial and Commercial Employment (Standing Orders) Ordinance, 1968 for the simple reason that he does not perform any skilled or unskilled, manual or clerical labour for hire or reward". The term "hire" excludes the term `salary', while the term "reward" does not necessarily imply a pecuniary reward leaving aside the separate question as to whether or not a fixed monthly salary payable to any employee can legally be regarded as a "reward". As a matter of fact in the considered judgment of the present Court the monthly salary of any kind, of employee of an Industrial and Commercial Establishment is a form of remuneration for his work that cannot legally or logically be regarded equivalent to anything described in the relevant statute a reward. At all events the petitioner Muhammad Bilal obviously failed to substantiate the view that the is a workman entitled to invoke the jurisdiction of this labour Court through a complaint under Standing Order 18(b) of the West Pakistan Industrial and Commercial Employment (Standing Orders) Ordinance, 1968.
6. It is also germane to this case to emphasize the fact that even if the petitioner had succeeded in convincing this Court of the fact of his being a workman in the legal sense of the term yet, in view of the proviso appended to clause (b) of Standing Order 18 of the above-mentioned Ordinance, no complaint would have been maintainable against an order of termination of his employment unless he had been found to be a officer of a Registered Trade Union and his employment had allegedly been terminated by the respondent for his Trade Union activities. In the present case the petitioner's employment was terminated by the respondent on the date 2-8-1970. There is not the slightest reliable material on the record to indicate that the petitioner had been an officer of a registered Trade Union for any appreciable length of the during a period of, say, three months preceding the termination of his employment by the respondent. Nor is there even an iota of evidence to show that the petitioner---s employment was terminated on account of any Trade Union activities. On the date 18-1-1971, when the arguments of the to parties ware being heard, the present petitioner hurriedly filed another application purporting to be under Standing Order 18 of the Ordinance in which he mentioned for the first the that he had been working as an Accounts Clerk in the service of the respondent and he further stated that he had been elected as the Vice- President of the National Mills Labour Union (Regd.) on the date 29-7-1970, that is to say only a few days before the termination of his employment. Nevertheless, even in this second and last application the petitioner Muhammad Bilal himself expressly stated that he had been receiving a salary of Rs. 210 p.m. From the respondent. I have already held above that a salaries employee of even an industrial or commercial establishment cannot legally or logically be regarded as a person employed to do any skilled or unskilled, manual or clerical labour for hire or reward, inasmuch as a monthly salary is neither a form of hire nor a species or reward. Any one who is familiar with the usage of the English language is aware of the important fact that the term salary denotes a fixed payment made to an employee at regular intervals for services performed by the employee, which are usually other than manual or mechanical in nature. Since I have arrived at the conclusion that the petitioner Muhammad Bilal was not a workman in the legal sense of the term, therefore it is unnecessary to expatiate upon the validity or the invalidity of his separate contention that his employment was terminated by the respondent because of some Trade Union activities performed by him during the few days that intervened between his election as the Vice-President of a Trade Union and the date of the termination of his employment by the respondent.
7. For all the above-recorded reasons this complaint of Muhammad Bilal (the son of Muhammad Amin) is hereby dismissed. In view of the express provisions of clauses (c) and (d) of Standing Order No. 18 of the West Pakistan Industrial and Commercial Employment (Standing Orders)
8. Ordinance, 1968, read with the mandatory provisions of subsection (4) of section 37 of the Industrial Relations Ordinance, 1969, under which the present Labour Court has been established by the Provincial Government of the Punjab-this decision of the Punjab Labour Court, Central Zone, Lahore, "shall be final and shall not be called in question in any manner by or before any Court or other authority." The obvious implication of these provisions of the law is that no appeal lies against the decision of the Punjab Labour Court, Central Zone, Lahore, to any Court or other authority.
9. A copy of this decision shall be sent to the petitioner complainant Muhammad Bilal by registered acknowledgement due mail as soon as it has been prepared.