MAMOON A. KAZI (MEMBER).-This appeal has been filed under subsection (3) of section 8 of the industrial Relations Ordinance. The appellant, an industry-wise Trade Union formed by the workers of P. I. A. C., filled an application for its registration to this Commission on 9October, 1976. After the expiry of fifteen days, which is the maximum period within which such an application is to be disposed of, the appellant made enquiries from the N. I. R. C,, regarding the fate of its application and was told that no final decision had yet been taken in the case as the file thereof was lying with the Government. In this appeal, the contention of the appellant is, that since no objections were communicated to it under subsection (2) of section 8 of the I. R. O., the registration certificate should have been granted to the appellant within fifteen days which was the time-limit prescribed by section 8, subsection (1) of the I. R. O.
2. Section 8 of the I. R. O. prescribes the procedure which is to be followed by the Registrar after receiving an application from a Trade Union for registration. Under section 8 of subsection (1) of the I. R. O., the Registrar has to register the Union within fifteen day s from the date of the receipt of the application. In case the application is found to be deficient in some material respect then according to the same subsection, the objections are to be communicated to the Trade Union also within fifteen days from the date of the receipt of the application. When the objections raised by the Registrar have been satisfactorily met, subsection (2) of section 8 provides that the Registrar has to issue a certificate of registration within three days of the date of the objections having been so met. In case the objections have not been satisfactorily met, then the same subsection provides that the application of the Union may be rejected. Subsection (3) of section 8 then provides, that inth case the application for registration has been delayed beyond the period of fifteen days or the registration certificate has not been issued within the period of three days from the date of meeting of the objections by the Union as the case may be, the Trade Union may appeal to the Labour Court, who, for reasons to be stated in its judgment, may pass an order directing the Registrar of Trade Unions to issue a certificate of registration or may dismiss the appeal. In this particular case, the Union being an industry---wise Trade Union, the application for registration was entertained by a Single Bench of this Commission, acting as Registrar, and this appeal has been filed before this Bench under subsection (3) of section 8, as in the case of an industry-wise Trade Union, it is the Full Bench of this Commission which has to act as a Labour Court.
3. In view of this legal position, there could hardly have been any dispute about the stand taken by the appellant-Union, but the material question that has now arisen is, whether the app4aut-Uaion is entitled at all to be registered, because a Notification No. SRO-395(1)/76 in the official Gazette, was issued on 28th April, 1976 by the Interior Division, Government of Pakistan declaring all classes of employment under the Pakistan Inter--national Airlines Corporation, to be the employment to which the provisions of the Pakistan Essential Services (Maintenance) Act, 1952, hereinafter referred to as "the Ace", shall apply, which was again followed by another such notification, dated the 27th October,. 1976, extending the application of the Act to a further period of six months; commencing from 28th October, 1976. The net effect of those Notifications, according to me, would be, to completely oust the provisions of the I. R. O. from application to P. I. A. C. The question therefore arises as to how the appellant-Union can be registered, because the registration of a Trade Union, which directly emanates from the right of the workmen to form association of their own choosing, takes place under the I. R. O.
4. The perusal of the various provisions of the Act will show, that besides making necessary provisions for the maintenance of certain essential services, it also regulates relations between the employer and the employees. The most important in this respect is section 6, subsection (1) whereof says:---- "6.--(1) The Central Government may make rubs regulating or empower--ing a specified authority to regulate the wages and other conditions of service of persons or of any class of persons engaged in any employ--ment or class of employment declared under section 3 to be an employment or class of employment to which this Act applies."
The provision just referred to above empowers the Central Government to make rules, regulating wages and other conditions of service of the employees. It also authorises it to specify an authority in this respect, the option for which entirely vests in the Central Government. It hardly needs to be mentioned, that when the Central Government chooses to delegate its functions under section 6(1) to an authority specified thereby, the latter as delegatee of the Central Government is also supposed to exercise the same powers as the Central Government. This makes it clear that the power vesting in the Central Government or an authority to be named thereby under section 6, subsection (1), is basically a rule-making power; and the intention clearly seems to be that whenever the provisions of the Act are made to apply to an employment the Central Government or as the case may be, an authority specified thereby must make rules regulating conditions of service of the employees. When such rules have been made or directions have been issued, then subsection (2) of section 6 makes non-compliance therewith, an offence. This provision in the Act has been made with a view to completely safeguard the conditions of service prescribed under the Act. The nest important provision, which I would like to mention is section 5 of the Act, which has been made to meet contigencies like strike, lock-out, closing down of establishment by an employer, etc. What I have tried to show by this, is, that the Act, like the I. R. O. is a complete Code in itself, as it provides for a complete machinery for regulating relations between the employer and the 4 employee.
5. The I. R. O., on the other hand, which also regulates relations between the employer and the employee, also deals with conditions of service of workers. The subjects to which it broadly refers are 1(1) formation and registration of Trade Unions (ii) industrial disputes, their settlement, etc ; (iii) the right of the workmen to declare strike and the corresponding right of the employer to declare a luck-out ; (iv) appointment of various functionaries to perform various functions under the Ordinance; and (v) matters incidental to the above. These, according to me mainly relate to the conditions of service. The right of the workmen to form Trade Unions, to raise industrial disputes, to resort to a strike, broadly speaking, constitute conditions of service. This, in fact, seems to be the reason that in reference in section 7-A of the Act, to which I shall be presently referring, has specifically been made to the-Trade Unions Act or the Industrial Disputes Ordinance, both the abovesaid enactments basically referring to the same matters. The I. R. O. which has ultimately succeeded the above-said enactments, now d; ale with those subjects.
6. The examination of the provisions of the Act and the I. R. O. clearly shows their overlapping of each other in all material respects, both occupying the same field. After giving my most careful consideration to the provisions of the two enactments, I am clearly of that view that they cannot co-exist together. Section 7-A of the Act which was inserted therein by section 3 of the Pakistan Essential Services (Maintenance) Ordinance, 1965 (V of 1965), clearly lays down that under such circumstances the provisions of the I. R. O. have to give way to those of the Act. It is reproduced as below:-- "7-A. The provisions of this Act shall have effect, notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained in the Trade Unions Act, 1926 or the Industrial Disputes Ordinance, 1959, or any other law."
Section 7-A provides in the first place, that the provisions of the Act shall have effect. That means, that whenever there is overlapping between the provisions of the Act and those of any other enactment, the provisions of the Act have to prevail. This, in my opinion, amounts to clear ouster of the provisions of any other enactment by those of the Act. The mention of the words "notwithstanding to the contrary contained in the Trade Unions Act, 1926 or the Industrial Disputes Ordinance, 1969 or any other law", only further emphasises that even in case there is anything contrary contained in the abovesaid enactments or any other law, the provisions of the Act shall still prevail. The specific reference to the Trade Unions Act or the Industrial Disputes Ordinance, to my mind, shows clear overlapping of the provisions of the Act with those of the abovesaid enactments and consequently the I. R. O. Under these circumstances the only conclusion that can be drawn is, that the Act completely ousts the provisions of tree I. R. O. In this respect, reference may be made to an earlier decision of the Full Bench of this Commission, of which I also was one of the Members in Mohammad Surwar v. Ijlal Haider (1977 PLC 40) in which it was held in clear terms that the Act completely ousted the provisions of the I. R. O. in case of an employment to which the provisions of the Act applied, and the employer in relation to such employment could not be made liable for the offence of unfair labour practice committed under the I. R. O. I still find myself in full agreement with the above view.
7. This finally brings us to the question as to whether it is possible to register a new Trade Union under the provisions of the I. R. O. when the same have been ousted by those of the Act? The answer obviously is in the negative. Raja Abdul Rashid, the learned counsel appearing on behalf of the appellant, has pointed out that one Union has already been registered by the Commission after extension of the provisions of the Act to P.I. A. C. If that is the case, I cannot help expressing my regret therefor because only if the Bench of this Commission which dealt with that case in its capacity as a Registrar, had cared to look into the clear-cut finding of the Full Bench, in the case referred to above, the Union might not have been registered. But as far as we are concerned we are unable to go into the case of any other Union because we are exercising here only the powers of a Labour Court, the functions of which are limited only to those as specified under section 8 subsection (3) of the I. R. O. The functions of registration of the Unions lie with the Registrar, therefore, acting as a Labour Court we cannot concern ourselves with transactions already past and closed.
8. The learned counsel for the appellant has cited before us two decisions, given by the High Court of Lahore and Chairman, Sind Labour Appellate Tribunal in Chairman, Water and Power Development Authority, Lahore and 3 others v. Punjab Labour Court No. 3, Lyallpur and another (1976 PLC 740) and General Secretary Jinnah Post Graduate Medical Centre Employees' Union v.
Registrar Trade Unions and another (1975 PLC 837) respectively. In the first mentioned case it was held by the High Court that the provisions of section 7-A did not oust the application of section 34 of the I. R. O. In this case, an employee of MPO, WAPDA, to which the cover of the Act had been extended, was re-instated by the Labour Court and a petition filed by the employer under Article 199 of the Constitution, challenging the reinstatement, before the abovesaid High Court, was dismissed. The reasons stated by the High Court were, that under the Act certain penalties are prescribed, and since none of them referred to the termination of services by the employer of the employee the provisions of section 7-A of the Act were not attracted. In the present case, the question relates to a right of the workers to form a Trade Union and get it registered under the I. R.
O. This, as stated above, being a very important condition of service provided by the I. R. O. is in conflict with section 6, subsection (1) of the Act, which empowers the Central Government or an Authority to be specified thereby in this behalf to regulate conditions of service. Therefore, the decision cited by the learned counsel has no relevance to the present case. The other decision which was given by the Sind Labour Appellate Tribunal, and to which the learned counsel for the appellant has refs reed, only repelled the argument advanced on behalf of the respondent in that case, that under section 7-A of the Act, the appellant trade Union in that case should be deemed to have ceased to exist. Although there are observations in that decision to the effect that the application of the Act does not debar a Union from mere registration, but since the learned Chairman did not address himself to this particular question, those observe lions were obiter, and should hardly have any material bearing-on the issue before us. It may however be made clear, that the Act being temporary in nature, its application would debar the already existing Unions from carrying on their Trade Union activities, but since the registration of the unions, I takes place under the I. R. O., the new Unions obviously cannot be registered.
9. Under the circumstances, no directions as evisaged under subsection (3) of section 8 of the I. R.
O., can be given, and according to me this appeal is therefore liable to be dismissed.