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Visa Ravindran
Contents
Introduction
Basic
rights
Discrimination
Reporting
Human Rights
Press
clippings
Links
and resources
Suggested
readings
- Article 23, Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Suja trained as a nurse, but was a faceless worker in a fish-processing unit in Mumbai, a job she was forced to take after her husband deserted her in 1995. Promised a salary of Rs. 1400, with free food and accommodation, she left her one-year-old daughter with her ailing mother to work 13 to 15 hours a day at a stretch, beginning at 3 a.m. She received only half the promised salary. Her story was told in The Hindu. Hazardous working conditions, inhuman living conditions, lack of adequate sanitation, fatigue, malnutrition, stress of separation from family, forceful confinement and loneliness, threat of abuse and physical torture from managers and supervisors of the unit took a toll on Suja's mental and physical health. 'A woman worker asserts her rights.' She ran away and was brought back. She 'fell' from the third floor of the building and was crippled forever in 1996. Intimidation followed when the question of compensation came up, with the management denying the incident took place in their premises. Trade unions and women's rights groups sought judicial intervention, and the Bombay High Court ruled that Suja was a bonded labourer, directing the management to pay her a compensation of Rs 2,500 a month for the rest of her life. The National Campaign on Labour Rights [NCLR] has demanded that the fish processing industry, which accounts for 4 per cent of national export earnings, should implement strictly the Inter-State Migrant Workers' Act and the Minimum Wages Act, monitor workers' health, create a welfare board for workers, bring workers under the Employees' State Insurance (ESI) Act and respect their right to information. A 'catastrophic discharge' of untreated effluents from the North
Chennai Thermal Power Station into the Buckingham Canal and Pulicat
lake has affected marine life there, affecting the livelihood of
the fishermen of Kattupalli island near Ennore. They say the water
discharged by the station is burning hot and the fish cannot survive
in such conditions, and they have demanded that the government provide
them alternate jobs and re-housing. 'When development brought grief to fishermen.' The New Indian Express, 2.9.00 Kerala has the highest number of jobless professionals in the country,
says a Times of India report. The total number
employed in the public sector has diminished, while in the private
sector it has gone up only marginally. Overall employment in this,
the most literate state in India, is even grimmer, with 3.7 million
out of work, a quarter of a million of them graduates or post-graduates.
Two million of the job-seekers are women. The Times of India, 2.7.00 Workers belonging to the Centre of Indian Trade Unions in Maharashtra
held a rally, in spite of pouring rain, to protest against the adverse
effects on them of the New Economic Policy. With the number of people
losing jobs increasing, and an increasing number of lock-outs and
closures in the State, they demanded that the state government should
pay them unemployment benefit and review the NEP. A former corporator of Mysore found a novel way of keeping his workers: he chained their legs to stop them from running away from his stone crushing unit near Srirangapatna. The workers said their legs had been shackled for periods ranging from thirty days to a year, and at one point there had been 30 workers in chains.They were forced to work from morning to night and sleep in a shed nearby, allowed no time to spend with their families. The stone crusher explained that he had to do this to keep them
from taking large advances and then running away. The workers said
he fiddled the accounts, but they were too afraid to go to the police.
Their plight was discovered by activists who went there to canvass
for local elections. The Times of India, 23.6.00 Mohammad Yasin was left as a boarder with a teacher couple so that he might attend the middle school several kilometers away from his home in Dashnah village, near Jammu. But the couple did a deal with the 13-year-old's parents - he could work for them in lieu of the Rs. 200 boarding charges. Yasin had to wash dishes in the kitchen, make tea for the family before he left for school, wash clothes on returning from school then work in the kitchen again. On New Year's Eve he was instructed to paint all the eight rooms in the house before the evening. In his haste to finish the job in time, Yasin fell from the second floor while painting the ceiling and hurt his leg. He was given more work, but no medical help until his leg started
swelling and infection set in. He was then admitted to hospital,
with the teacher-couple contributing to the cost of his treatment,
but they then washed their hands of the matter, leaving him crippled
for life. Yasin's family were not informed of the accident and learned
of it only when his mother tried to visit him at the house. Yasin's
father has now approached the State Human Rights Commission for
justice. Maharashtra has stipulated service rules for domestic servants
but housewives employing them are up in arms because, they say,
the rules are one-sided. The service conditions cover paid leave,
travel allowance and increased wages but employers feel the rules
do not deal with problems such as absenteeism. They argue that service
conditions should be decided on mutually between the domestic help
and the employer. There was also a problem of enforcement in this
unorganised sector. The Supreme Court has ruled that a casual labourer cannot be denied
equal pay for equal work done by regular employees in the same place
for the same work. The Hindustan Times, 3.10.00 Guidelines on right to work cover, among other things, safety and security at work and the health and welfare of workers. There are rules governing child labour. In the Indian Constitution, the right to work is set out in the Directive Principles of State Policy and it is a non-justiciable right - i.e. the courts have no role to play in its enforcement. Labour is in the Concurrent list, meaning that both the Central and State governments are competent to enact legislation, although certain matters are reserved for Delhi. The Ministry of Labour lists its main thrust areas:
Indian Labour Laws India is a member of the International Labour Union and complies with conventions it has ratified. Comprehensive labour legislation to provide a good working environment includes the following important laws, many of which have been flouted in the stories above. Industrial relations are regulated by the Industrial Disputes Act, which provides for just and equitable settlement of disputes through negotiations, conciliation, arbitration or adjudication. The Factories Act,1948, regulates working conditions in factories. The Act prescribes minimum standards for working conditions and facilities related to manufacturing processes, including the handling and storage of materials, discharge of effluents, fire precautions, working hours and health facilities. The Minimum Wages Act,1948, gives government the power to fix wages and working conditions in certain specified sectors. The Employees' State Insurance Act covers sickness, maternity and employment-related injuries and applies to workers with low wages. It's also worth looking at the Payment of Bonus Act,1956; the Payment of Gratuity Act; and the Employees Provident Fund Act, which are also relevant. In addition to these, several states have enacted Shops and Establishments Acts which regulate working hours, prescribe minimum standards of working conditions and provide for overtime and leave salary payments to workers in certain categories of shops and other establishments. The very large number of people without employment in India has
a role in all this. It creates a strong feeling of vulnerability
and insecurity among those who do have jobs, making them reluctant
to fight for individual rights. More often, they seek strength in
numbers and the help of strong unions to fight for common benefits.
Another important factor is that in India only 10 per cent of the
workforce is in the organised sector. To the majority, labour standards
are of distant relevance. This Declaration, adopted in June 1998 by the International Labour Conference, is a pledge by all members of the International Labour Organisation to respect, promote and realise in good faith principles and rights relating to:
Safety at Work According to the World Health Organisation, occupational accidents account for more than 120 million injuries and 220,000 deaths every year. There are about 160 million cases a year of occupational disease caused by exposure to physical, chemical and biological hazards - the most common include repetitive motion injuries, mechanical stress from heavy labour and pesticide poisoning. The risk of disease and injury is increased by chronic parasitic infections, lack of access to potable water, malnutrition, illiteracy and poverty. Only 5-10 per cent of workers in developing countries and 20 - 50 per cent from industrialised countries have access to adequate occupational healthcare services. Discrimination In 1997, there were 4,210 cases of harassment of trade union workers reported to the International Confederation of Free Trades Unions, 2,330 arrests or detention of trade unionists for union-related activities and 299 trade unionists were murdered. Harassment ranged from intimidation of workers lobbying for safer working conditions to sex discrimination of women workers for so-called medical reasons. (For information on Safety of Women in the Workplace refer to section on discrimination against women). ILO Convention No.87 protects workers' rights relating to trade unions, health and safety but over half the world's working population live in countries such as India, China and the USA which have not ratified the convention. Source: The Lancet article by Timothy H.Holtz.
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