Page 235 - DMGT306_MERCANTILE_LAWS_II

Mercantile Laws – II

Notes

Notes Applicability of Act (Sec. 1)
Every factory wherein 10 or more persons are employed with the aid of power or An
establishment In which 20 or more persons are employed without the aid of power on any
day during an accounting year.

Duties and Rights of Employer

Duties of Employer are as follows:
 To calculate and pay the annual bonus as required under the Act.
 To submit an annual return of bonus paid to employees during the year to the Inspector,
within 30 days of the expiry of the time limit specified for payment of bonus.
 To co-operate with the Inspector, produce before him the registers/records maintained,
and such other information as may be required by them.

 To get his account audited as per the directions of a Labour Court/Tribunal or of any such
other authority.
An employer has the following rights:

 Right to forfeit bonus of an employee, who has been dismissed from service for fraud,
riotous or violent behaviour, or theft, misappropriation or sabotage of any property of
the establishment.
 Right to make permissible deductions from the bonus payable to an employee, such as,
festival/interim bonus paid and financial loss caused by misconduct of the employee.

 Right to refer any disputes relating to application or interpretation of any provision of the
Act, to the Labour Court or Labour Tribunal.



Caselet Ghewar Chand’s Case

he principle that a ruling of a superior court is binding law is not of scriptural
sanctity but is of ratio-wise luminosity within the edifice of facts where the judicial
Tlamp plays the legal flame. So there is no impediment in reading Ghewar Chand’s
case as confined to profit-bonus, leaving room for non-statutory play of customary bonus.
That case relates to profit bonus under the Industrial Disputes Act.

The major inarticulate premise of the statute is that it deals with-and only with-profit-
based bonus. There is no categorical provision in the Bonus Act nullifying all other kinds
of bonus, nor does such a conclusion arise by necessary implication. The core question
about the policy of the Parliament that was agitated in that case turned on the availability
of the Industrial Disputes Act as an independent method of claiming profit bonus de hors
the Bonus Act and the Court took the view that it would be subversive of the scheme of the
Act to allow an invasion from the flank in that manner. A discerning and concrete analysis
of the scheme of the Act and the reasoning of the Court leaves no doubt that the Act leaves
untouched customary bonus.
Source: http://indiankanoon.org/doc/191016/

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