law stipulated that the employer must pay full wages and pursue action against the worker as individual misconduct despite collective action of the workers. I was pursuing the matter in the appropriate court. I was running a monthly bulletin for the company’s workers since July 1966 and was communicating the happenings in the factory and the problems it was facing from month to month. I had created a habit of reading in the households of the workers. The family members were also acquainted with these happenings at the workplace. People were aware of the neutral transparency of the published material like an independent newspaper. I had created a value of truthfulness in the readers’ minds. I used to print the letters and articles of the employees which were often critical and the Opposite of the company’s viewpoint. Their comments and questions were replied to by me. I did not print only news favourable to the management. I kept communications flowing and created an impression that I will not publish Untruth.
This go-slow was not entered into for the purpose of achieving any demands of the workers. It was to show the control of RJ over the management of the company. It was a matter of his personal ego. I was communicating this opinion to the employees and their families through the Bulletin for six months. This was a very significant factor.
‘No work no Pay’ is the accepted principle in matters of Industrial relations. But ‘Go-slow ‘is not a strike in the normal legal sense because some work is done. Workers do some work and their inaction does not amount to cessation of work. The relevant law expects management to treat go-slow as a personal misconduct and proceed with charge-sheets, enquiry and so on. In fact this is an inappropriate remedy. Collective action like go-slow must have a collective remedy. I therefore followed a different track. I started deducting salary proportionate to the work not performed. This was totally unexpected by the Union. Whether legal or otherwise, we pressed on with proportionate deduction of salary. We deducted salary only where it was clearly possible to prove conclusively that a worker was under-productive. Again it was done in respect of those workers where it was most apparent. From the third month the workers started getting the hit for their go-slow action. Naturally the message reached to all households. My information through Unichem Bulletin was already known to them.
RJ Mehta’s union was known for the financial probity and proper accounting of the funds collected and deployed by him. Union therefore had a pile of cash which could be used by the union to provide succour to the workers to meet a shortage in salaries. Union had invested nearly Rs 150,000 in making disbursement as advance to those whose salaries were cut by the company. His was possibly the only Union then operating in
52 �
