DISCIPLINE BY LEAGEL SANCTION We have till now dealt with discipline, its causative factors, and the different forms it can take. Let us now turn our attention to how best we can discourage indiscipline, and develop disciplined behavior in industry. It will be recalled that indisciplined behavior can be described as a situation where an individual or group of individual do not conform to the established rules in the plant and generally behave in a manner where they energies of the workers are deflected away from the objectives of the industry. There are two ways of dealing with the problem of indiscipline, viz., the legal approach, where the sanctions incorporated in the standing orders are applied as a short-cut to discipline, and the other way is to study the causative factors of such behavior, and take suitable actionafterall efforts at communication, grievance handling have been taken and a reasonable chance has been given to all concerned to come round. Only when psychological efforts fail may sections be applied as a last resort. However, which of the above approaches will succeed depends on the state of industrial relations in a plant, and the attitudes of workers and management towards each other. Each factory has a set of rules to which the workers are expected to conform . These include provisions relating to attendance, obeying of orders, spitting only at specified places and the acts of omission or commission which are made punishable. These acts may be committed by individual workers or by a group. Nowadays punishment, including suspension and dismissal, cannot be awarded without a through investigation through a domestic inquiry. The basic concepts underlying the conduct of a domestic inquiry are as follows:- Social justiceThe Constitutional guarantee of social justice involves two aspects:1. That no section of the society will be permitted to take advantage of the weaker sections and 2. That all will get their due. Consequently, in India, which has a large number of unemployed people, it is necessary that there should be some restrictions on the rights of the employers to ‘hire and fire’. While there is no legal binding to hold an investigation through the domestic enquiry, the variation decisions of the tribunals and courts have made it essential to hold such an inquiry prior to giving any punishment by any way of dismissal, discharge or suspension. Natural JusticeIt is the ideal justice, according to which justice is dispensed with in accordance with the dictates of supreme nature. It has the following characteristics:· Universality: Nature being all pervading contains the whole world and hence he rules of natural justice must apply to all human beings.· Equality: The rules must apply to all human beings considering them as equal before law.· Reasonableness: The rules that comprise the concept of natural justice should be temperate and not extremists, or in other words, such as are accepted as reasonable.· Uniformity: These rules must apply in the same manner to all under similar circumstances.· An ideal of higher moral life: The concept of natural justices is essentially an ideal concept, which draws its inspiration from the moral precepts or the superior code of conduct, evolved by the Society. Hence the concept of natural justice emphasizes the rights of the individual and the needs to dispense justice to him under all the circumstances, as well as the need to adjust social idles to practical needs of the times. Accordingly, the following principles emerge in the industrial setting: · No man should be adjudged guilty unless he is proved to be so, on the basis of recorded evidence;· All evidence should be recorded in the presence of the accused worker who should have a right to cross-examine the witness;· The punishment must be imposed on the person after he has been given a full opportunity to defend himself;· The punishment should be proportionate to the offence;· The person investigating the offence should be different from the person passing the sentence. In other words, no one should be a judge in his own case.