Bharat Sugar Mills Ltd v Jai Singh (1961)

This is the authority on go-slow, quoted in every Indian discussion of the subject.

It settles two things. First, go-slow is not a strike — there is no cessation of work, so it falls outside the definition in s. 2(q) of the Industrial Disputes Act and outside the strike provisions altogether. Second, it is nevertheless serious misconduct under the standing orders, and the Court's reasons for calling it serious are what make the case memorable.

The passage every student is expected to know is Das Gupta J's description of go-slow as a "picturesque description of deliberate delaying of production by workmen pretending to be engaged in the factory" — among the most pernicious practices open to discontented workmen, and more harmful than an outright strike.

The word "insidious" comes from the same line of authority: go-slow works by concealment. The workman keeps his place, keeps his wages, and quietly destroys output.

The workmen of the Bharat Sugar Mills resorted to a go-slow — they remained at their posts and appeared to be working, but deliberately reduced the rate of production to press their demands on the management.

The management treated this as misconduct under the standing orders, took disciplinary proceedings and dismissed the workmen found responsible, Jai Singh and others among them. The dismissals became an industrial dispute and went before the industrial tribunal, which took a lenient view and directed reinstatement. The employer appealed.

Two things about this posture shape the ratio. The employer was the appellant, so the question was whether the tribunal had been wrong to treat the go-slow lightly. And the case was decided in 1961, a decade before s. 11A was inserted into the Industrial Disputes Act in 1971 — so the tribunal's power to interfere with a punishment then rested on judge-made limits, not on any statutory power to substitute a lesser penalty.

1. Does a go-slow amount to a strike within s. 2(q) of the Industrial Disputes Act 1947?
2. Is go-slow misconduct, and how serious?
3. What is the tribunal's power over the punishment, and when may it order reinstatement instead of dismissal?

For the employer. A go-slow is a deliberate and concerted breach of the contract of employment, worse than a strike: during a strike the employer knows where he stands and pays nothing, while during a go-slow he pays full wages for a fraction of the output and his machinery runs at speeds it was not designed for. The standing orders made it misconduct, the enquiry established it, and the tribunal had no business substituting its own view of the gravity of the offence.

For the workmen. There was no stoppage. The men attended, remained at their posts and worked; this was not a strike and did not attract the strike provisions. Output fluctuates for many reasons — machinery, raw material, staffing — and a shortfall is not by itself proof of a deliberate conspiracy to slow down. The tribunal, charged with keeping industrial peace, was entitled to take a merciful view.

The Supreme Court held for the employer on the characterisation of go-slow.

1. Go-slow is not a strike. "Strike" under s. 2(q) requires a cessation of work or a concerted refusal to work. In a go-slow the workmen neither cease nor refuse to work; they work, but badly and deliberately so. The strike provisions have no application — and that is precisely why the device was used.

2. Go-slow is a serious type of misconduct. The Court's reasoning, to be reproduced in substance:

• It is a "picturesque description of deliberate delaying of production by workmen pretending to be engaged in the factory", one of the most pernicious practices discontented or disgruntled workmen resort to.
• It is dishonest: while delaying production and reducing output the workmen claim to have remained employed and to be entitled to full wages.
• It is more harmful than a total cessation of work by strike, because the machinery is kept running at a reduced speed, often extremely damaging to machine parts.
• For all these reasons go-slow has always been considered a serious type of misconduct.

3. On relief. The tribunal had erred in treating so grave a form of misconduct as minor and directing reinstatement on that footing. Where go-slow is established after a proper enquiry it will ordinarily justify dismissal under the standing orders, and the tribunal cannot substitute its own leniency merely because it would have decided differently.

A go-slow is not a strike within s. 2(q) of the Industrial Disputes Act 1947, because there is no cessation of or refusal to work; but it is a serious species of misconduct — dishonest in that full wages are claimed for deliberately reduced output, and potentially more damaging than a strike because machinery continues to run at reduced speed — and where established after a proper domestic enquiry it will ordinarily justify dismissal under the standing orders.

Date the third limb. The limit on the tribunal's power stated in 1961 was the pre-s. 11A position. Section 11A, inserted by Act 45 of 1971 with effect from 15 December 1971, gave the Labour Court or Tribunal express power, on finding a discharge or dismissal unjustified, to set it aside and direct reinstatement or award any lesser punishment in lieu. After 1971 the tribunal does have that power. What survives is the characterisation of go-slow as grave misconduct, which is exactly what makes it hard to argue that dismissal was disproportionate.

The case turns on a comparison between the strike and the go-slow, and that comparison answers almost any question set on this topic.

In a strike the position is open. The workmen stop, the employer knows it, production stops, and the workmen forgo their wages. Everyone can see what is happening — the employer can prepare, the law can regulate the timing, and the wages question is decided by the double test in Syndicate Bank v K. Umesh Nayak (1994) 5 SCC 572.

In a go-slow nothing is open. The workmen appear to be working. The employer cannot tell whether the fall in output is deliberate or the result of a machine fault, poor raw material or short staffing. He pays full wages. He cannot lock out, there being no visible stoppage to respond to. And the plant keeps running — which is where the damage comes from, since machinery turning at abnormally low speeds suffers wear it would suffer neither at rest nor at its designed rate.

That is what makes go-slow insidious: a covert breach of the contract of service disguised as performance, leaving the employer to prove a wrong the workmen have deliberately concealed.

Two practical consequences follow, both examinable.

First, go-slow is not a legitimate weapon. A strike is a recognised, statutorily regulated instrument of industrial pressure; a go-slow is misconduct with no place in the armoury of labour. Later authority is consistent, calling the slow-down an insidious method of undermining the stability of a concern which tribunals will not countenance.

Second, proof is the real battleground. A mere fall in output proves nothing. The employer must establish a norm of output and a deliberate and concerted departure from it, through a proper enquiry and by evidence excluding the innocent explanations. The case tells you the conduct is grave; it does not relieve the employer of proving it.

1. The characterisation has never been doubted. Go-slow remains serious misconduct in Indian industrial jurisprudence, and the Bharat Sugar Mills passage remains the standard citation.

2. Section 11A changed the remedial position, not the characterisation. After 1971 a Labour Court or Tribunal that finds a dismissal unjustified may award a lesser punishment in lieu. But it must first find the dismissal unjustified, and a finding of deliberate go-slow makes that very difficult to reach.

3. The enquiry requirements were settled separately. Dismissal for misconduct requires a fair domestic enquiry, and where the enquiry is defective or absent the employer may adduce evidence before the tribunal to justify the action — the line running through Workmen of Motipur Sugar Factory v Motipur Sugar Factory (Supreme Court, 1965) to Workmen of Firestone Tyre and Rubber Co v Management, AIR 1973 SC 1227. Bharat Sugar Mills tells you what the misconduct is worth; they tell you how it must be proved.

4. Go-slow became a statutory unfair labour practice. State legislation came first — the Maharashtra Recognition of Trade Unions and Prevention of Unfair Labour Practices Act 1971 lists go-slow among the unfair labour practices on the part of workmen — and central law has now followed.

The case survives the repeal, and the Code has adopted its view of go-slow expressly — one of the clearest examples in the subject of judge-made law being written into statute.

The Industrial Disputes Act 1947 and the Industrial Employment (Standing Orders) Act 1946 were both repealed on 21 November 2025 by IR Code s. 104(1)(a) and (c).

The definitional holding is unaffected. "Strike" in IR Code s. 2(zk) still means a cessation of work by persons acting in combination, or a concerted refusal to continue to work, and includes concerted casual leave on a given day by fifty per cent or more workers. A go-slow is neither a cessation nor a refusal to work, so it remains outside "strike" — the Code's one extension is to mass casual leave, not to go-slow.

The misconduct holding is now statutory. Under the Second Schedule, Part II, item (5) it is an unfair labour practice "to stage, encourage or instigate such forms of coercive actions as wilful 'go-slow', squatting on the work premises after working hours or 'gherao' of any of the members of the managerial or other staff". Section 84 prohibits any employer, worker or trade union from committing a practice specified in that Schedule, and s. 86(5) makes it punishable with a fine of ten thousand to two lakh rupees, rising under s. 86(6) on a second conviction to fifty thousand to five lakh rupees, or imprisonment up to three months, or both.

The Code also solves the proof problem Bharat Sugar Mills left open — the single most valuable point you can make about the case today. Two Explanations to item (5) supply a legal test.

Explanation 1 defines go-slow as an occasion when more than one worker in an establishment conjointly work more slowly and with less effort than usual to persuade the employer to agree to higher pay, better service conditions or some other demand. Four ingredients, now fixed by statute.

Explanation 2 defines "usual": where a standard has been specified for the worker's work daily, weekly or monthly, that standard; and where none has been specified, the average of the work in the previous three months. That turns the employer's old evidentiary difficulty into an arithmetical exercise against a defined benchmark.

Misconduct and relief. Go-slow remains misconduct under standing orders, now governed by Chapter IV — note the threshold change: s. 28(1) applies that Chapter at three hundred or more workers, where the repealed Standing Orders Act applied at one hundred. Item 9 of the First Schedule requires standing orders to provide for "suspension or dismissal for misconduct, and acts or omissions which constitute misconduct". The successor to s. 11A is IR Code s. 50: on an application under s. 53(6) relating to discharge or dismissal, a Tribunal satisfied that the order was not justified may set it aside and direct reinstatement, or give such other relief including the award of any lesser punishment in lieu.

Under the Code. Bharat Sugar Mills survives and has been codified. IR Code 2020, s. 2(zk) keeps "strike" confined to cessation of or refusal to work, so go-slow is still not a strike; but Second Schedule Part II(5) now makes wilful go-slow an express unfair labour practice, prohibited by s. 84 and punishable under s. 86(5) with a fine of ten thousand to two lakh rupees. Its Explanations 1 and 2 define go-slow and fix the benchmark of "usual" output — a specified standard, or failing that the average of the previous three months — supplying the test of proof the case left to evidence. Remedial discretion is now s. 50 (successor to ID Act s. 11A), and standing orders fall under Chapter IV, applying at 300 or more workers under s. 28(1) instead of the old 100.