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 Employ- 
ment 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 opera- 
tions 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 demon- 
strates 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 dis- 
charged employees, from exercising rights of appeal generally accorded 
bo dismissed employees. The contention is that the usual form of agree- 
ment 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 commer- 
cial 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 rail- 
ways 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