Can Management ask employees to give undertaking to comply with social distancing, wear mask, maintain discipline and give full production?
Can such employee be marked absent and not allowed to join duties if they refuse to give undertaking?
There appears no industrial dispute at this point as their names are very much on the rolls of the company and they have been marked absent and not paid wages because they did not give undertaking which was required.
Undertaking does not in any way change the service conditions. Though the facts of a case are not exactly the same but similar to some extent where Industrial Tribunal, Bombay, in the case of Vishnu Tulsiram and Others vs. Metal Press India Bombay, has held that.
Keeping the workmen out of the factory premises unless they give the required undertaking did not amount to termination of their services or punishing them. It was upto the workmen to give the undertaking and to enter the factory. If they did not give the undertaking and consequently did not work, the employer can not be said to have wrongly marked them absent.
The undertaking demanded by the employer did not amount to alternation of the rules as there were no existing rules. Marking the workmen absent and depriving them of their wages did not amount to introduction of new rules of discipline.
The undertaking asked by the employer is legal and effective and there is no contravention of Section 9-A. More such guidelines are also mandated by the Government to follow keeping in view the Covid Pandemic.
By Dayanand N. Mangaonkar