Five Festival Holidays in a year for Private Sector Employee’s on Weekdays only : Madras High Court
Justice M. Dhandapani ruled that employees could not be denied the right to all five festival holidays simply because the employer prefers to offer such holidays for festivals that fall on a Sunday
Five Festival Holidays in a year for Private Sector Employee’s on Weekdays only the Madras High Court rule in the case of Maiva Pharma Employees’ Union versus Maiva Pharma
The Madras High Court ruled on Wednesday that employees of private enterprises will be entitled to five festival vacations per year if they choose to take them just on weekdays rather than weekly holidays such as Sundays.
Justice M. Dhandapani ruled that employees could not be denied the right to all five festival holidays simply because the employer prefers to offer such holidays for festivals that fall on a Sunday and the Deputy Director of Industrial Safety and Health, despite objections, approves the same.
The judge agreed with counsel N.G.R. Prasad, who represented the Maiva Pharma Employees’ Union, that declaring a Sunday as a festival holiday for an industrial facility where it was already a weekly holiday made no sense. He claimed that the name “holiday” implied that it could only be declared on a working day.
“A weekly holiday, whether a festival holiday or a special holiday, cannot be declared as a holiday under any name again.” Only four national holidays are exempt from this rule,” the judge said, insisting on undertaking conversations with both the business and the employees before finalizing the festival holidays.
The employees’ union filed a writ suit in the High Court challenging the proclamation of five festival holidays, three of which fell on Sunday. The judge found merit in their complaint, saying that numerous religious festivals fell on weekdays and that the pharma business might have declared them as festival holidays this year.
The judge stated that the pharma company should have consulted the employees before declaring the festival holidays: “However, the third respondent has not done so, for which the reason is very simple – the management does not want to be deprived of its production, whereas the employees can lose their holidays and stand deprived.”
He claimed that the Tamil Nadu Industrial Establishments (National, Festival, and Special Holidays) Act, 1958, correctly required consultation with employees before determining the holidays for a given year. He noted that no such consultation had occurred in the instance of the writ petitioner union.
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