160 CHAPTER X

are responsible for the safety of the travelling public and it is essential
that they should be both attentive and alert in the performance of their
duties. Staff working the long hours prevalent on some railways must
have considerable difficulty in maintaining the requisite standard of
efficiency. The reduction to be effected under the Hours of Employment
 Rules is long over-due and it is admitted that a considerable time
will elapse before the Rules are extended to all workers. As the operations
 would be the same, their application to a lower limit than 60 hours
presents no administrative difficulty. The question at issue is, whether
it is reasonable to require that the hours of employment of railway
workers should exceed the weekly limits of the general body of workers
whose hours are regulated by statute. If regard be had both to the
International Labour Conventions and to the general practice in other
countries, it will be found that no such distinction is attempted. In
their opinion our examination of conditions obtaining in India demonstrates
 that such a contention is untenable. They are, therefore, not
prepared to subscribe to our conclusion and accordingly recommend that
the weekly hours of continuous workers be reduced to the same level
as thev have suggested for factory and mine workers, namely, fortv-eicht.

Security of Service.
We have received a great deal of evidence on the subject of
disciplinary action and insecurity of service. On the one side it was
urged that existing forms of service agreements were unfair in that the
administration was empowered to terminate service without assigning
reasons. It was also urged that on occasions men were dispensed with
by discharge instead of by dismissal, thereby preventing them, as discharged
 employees, from exercising rights of appeal generally accorded
bo dismissed employees. The contention is that the usual form of agreement
 gives no protection against unfair termination of service. The
other side of the case is stated by the Railway Board in recently issued
rules and explanations regulating the discharge and dismissal of state
railway non-gazetted covernment servants as follows *—

“ The Railway Department being a commercial department, service in it must
in its nature ditler from service in other government departments and continuance
of employment must be subject to the tests and conditions enforced by large commercial
 concerns, Accordingly the power which the railway administrations possess of
discharging railway servants without assigning reasons in accordance with the terms
of their agreement, or otherwise on reduction of establishment due to fluctuations
of traffic, simplification of the methods of work or any other cause, or on grounds
of inefficiency, must he retained. This power, however, by its very nature
imposes upon the competent authority the obligation to use.it considerately and
with strict justice so that the railway servants shall feel that they can expect
fair and reasonable treatment. A too frequent or a thoughtless recourse to it
is apt to lead to a sense of instability of service, which is detrimental both to the
welfare of the staff and to the efficient and eecnnomical warking of railways.”

The partial application, however, of Fundamental Rules and other
rules and regulations to state-managed and company-managed railways
 on no uniform plan has complicated the position and created
service traditions and vested rights that cannot be ignored. The feeling
of insecurity of service is a source of anxiety. which in our oninion justifies