REINSTATEMENT NOT TO MEAN FULL PAYMENT OF BACK WAGES
SUPREME COURT OF INDIA [bench of Justices Tarun Chatterjee and Surinder Singh Nijar] held on 03.12.09 as follows: -
Getting your job back after a long bitter legal battle with your employer hardly means he has to pay you the entire back wages FOR CONTRIBUTING LITTLE OR NOTHING to the establishment. Employers can decide on a case-to-case basis if they really have to pay full back wages to a staffer, who had been terminated from service but had gone to court and won his jpb back. The payment of back wages having a discretionary element involved in it, had to be dealt with in the circumstances of each case and no straight jacket formula can be evolved. The rationale for the pick and choose policy, the court said, is that an ousted employee ends up CONTRIBUTING LITTLE OR NOTHING to the employerduring the period of absence. Payment of full back wages upon an order of termination being declared illegal cannot be granted mechanically. It does not automatically follow that reinstatement must be accompanied by payment of full back wages even for the period when the workman remained out of service and contributed little or nothing to the industry. The court was deciding an appeal by a Kanpur based marble company against their oldf-time accountant.
[full text of the judgement will be placed in the website http://www.taxesinindia.com as soon as it is available for publication]
SUPREME COURT ORDER
VENKATRAMAN RAGGHUPATHY, Web admin.
