Employer can’t give short shrift to staff: SC

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday lamented that the country witnessed an unfortunate state of affairs in labour relations where employers, to avoid liability under various laws, were often resorting to subterfuge of showing their employees as those employed under a contractor.
"It is high time that this subterfuge must come to an end," said a bench of Justices Markandey Katju and Chandramauli Kumar Prasad. It said labour laws were meant to protect employees/workmen from exploitation as they and the employers were not on an equal bargaining position.
"The new technique of subterfuge has been adopted by some employers in recent years in order to deny the rights of the workmen under various labour statutes by showing that the concerned workmen are not their employees but are the employees of a contractor, or that they are merely daily wagers or short-term or casual employees when in fact they are doing the work of regular employees," it said.
The case related to Bhilwara Dugdh Utpadak Shahkari Samiti Ltd which had denied certain employees to be its own and had passed them off as being employed by a contractor engaged by it.