The appeal had come to the high court at the interim stage from the industrial court as the lower court gave conflicting interim orders earlier.

In the case of the VRS launched at Kamani International, the court ruled that a notice of change is mandatory. While in the case of the VRS launched by Blue Star, the court ruled that the notice of change was not required.

The employees are fighting the voluntary retirement schemes on the ground that the schemes announced do not take into account the basic question of whether the units going for the scheme have become unviable or not.

On April 17, a single judge bench of justice FI Rebello ruled in their favour, making it mandatory for companies offering VRS to give a notice of change to the employees' representative union.

The managements of therespective companies appealed against justice Rebello's orders. The hearing was taken up by a high court bench consisting of justices BN Srikrishna and Nijjar.

Last week, the two-judge bench set aside the previous judgement of justice Rebello after a joint consensus between the Kamani employees union and the Blue Star employees as well as the management.

Justice Srikrishna's contention was that a higher court cannot take a final decision on the matter till the decision of the lower court is finally decided and disposed.

The employees' unions' stand was that the managements should consider Section 9A of the Industrial Disputes Act (IDA). The section states that the employer introducing a change in service condition must give 21 days notice to the workers and the union before effecting the change.

The union's contention was that a VRS involves a deduction in the number of employees, hence it changes in the service condition and therefore the notice of change is but mandatory.

The employees' unionsalleged that the managements across the board were implementing VRS without any reference to the economic viability of the units and using it as a singular tool to downsize employees.

After justice Rebello made it mandatory for companies to inform the representative union before implementing VRS, almost all managements were hesitant to downsize the work force through the VRS route.