Dear Kishore kulkarni
Thanks for your response. It is nice that you have brought up the issue of relevance of Goyani’s case. At the outset, I would like to clarify that I did not say anywhere in my post that the enhanced gratuity was denied to the ex-employees because they were past employees. What I said was that the claim of the retired employees in Goyani’s case was held inadmissible to them because the same was applicable to the serving employees but not to retired employees. There is subtle difference between the two statements.
Secondly, I cited the case of Goyani more in the context of the examples quoted and queries raised by the learned member Mr.Rajkumar Hansdah in his post than in the context of ‘weekly off’ to be admissible to an ex-employee. In my reply to Mr. Rajkumar Hansadah in the context of his post, I said that an ex-employee cannot be deprived of his right to a benefit in every case and explaining the circumstances under which an ex-employee is entitled to claim a benefit even after he leaves employment, I said that an ex-employee can claim a benefit, if it accrued to him during his employment. It is in this context, I cited Goyani’s acse.
Now limiting myself to the issue of relevance of Goyani’s acse, I take the help of your own observation on the issue in your reply post to substantiate it’s relevance. You have stated that had the settlement been retrospective in it’s application, the retired employees too would have got the benefit of the enhanced gratuity. Now I would say that had the settlement been retrospective in it’s application, the benefit of enhanced gratuity would have been deemed to have accrued to the retired employees during their employment and they would have been entitled to the enhanced gratuity even after their retirement. This is precisely what I said in my reply to Mr. Rajkumar Hansdah and that’s how the Goyani’s case is relevant. . In other words what Goyani’s case coveys is that any benefit that accrues after an employee leaves the service and is applicable only to serving employees cannot be claimed by an ex-employee.
So far as the admissibility of ‘weekly off ‘ to an ex-employee is concerned, my line of interpretation is on a different footing which I made abundantly clear in my posts. Even at the risk of repetition, I would like to say once again that the concept of ‘weekly off’ shall not be understood solely from the context of entitlement of an employee to wages on that day but from the rationale and spirit underlying such concept. The concept of ‘weekly off’ is primarily meant to enable an employee a day’s rest after six days of hectic work but without depriving him of wages for the said day which is only secondary so that he turns up for work for the next six days thoroughly rejuvenated. Therefore the concept implies that a person shall enjoy rest and remain in employment to work further.
If, for example, an employee expires on Saturday due to natural causes after reaching home from his work place, then whether the diseased employee would be granted a ‘weekly off’ or whether his legal heirs would be granted ‘weekly off’ on Sunday. However assuming in Goyani’s case that the benefit of enhanced gratuity was made applicable with retrospective effect and one of the retired employees expired , his legal heirs would have been entitled to claim the benefit.
The precise point I would like to make is that one cannot use the same yardstick and logic to judge every case and each case has it’s own logic and rationale which needs to be applied in that case.
Hope I have made myself understood
B.Saikumar
HR & Labour Law advisor