Wazirpur hot-rolling steel plant workers call off strike

Monthly wages for all workers will be increased by Rs.1,500 from April 16

Hot-rolling steel plant workers at Wazirpur Industrial Estate and factory owners have called a truce. An estimated 500 workers who have been on strike since April 11 rejoined work on Wednesday.

The owners have agreed to provide ESI cards to all the workers which will help address their medical care issues and expenses. The monthly wages for all the workers will be increased by Rs.1,500 from April 16 onwards. Out of the six days that the strike lasted, the workers will be paid wages for four days by factory owners. None of the striking workers will be sacked by the factory owners.

A Labour Inspector visited the 24 hot-rolling factories on Wednesday and asked the workers, who submitted complaints to the Labour Department, to appear before him on April 29.

The workers had embarked on the strike from April 11 demanding payment of statutory minimum wages, eight-hour shifts, ESI and PF facilities, yearly-bonus, and extra payment for overtime work.

They had formed an organisation--Garam Rola Mazdoor Ekta Samiti--to protest the violation of labour laws in their plants. On Tuesday evening, some of the workers were detained by Ashok Vihar police and allowed to leave after a few hours.

The Samiti has formed an executive committee to raise the flouting of labour laws before various official fora like the Delhi Labour Department, Factory Inspectorate and Union Labour Ministry.

Raghuraj, the leader of the workers, while expressing disappointment that some of the demands for which the strike was undertaken could not be met, expressed optimism about the way ahead. He said the workers would put up a united front if attempts to coerce them by using the threat of police action are made.

“We are not stepping back from our core demands like minimum wages, social security benefits and better working conditions. We will highlight the violation of labour laws before government bodies. It is our expectation that factory owners will voluntarily provide us all the benefits that have so fare been denied to us,” he said.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/wazirpur-hotrolling-steel-plant-workers-call-off-strike/article4629510.ece

Workers steel for a better deal

The Wazirpur Industrial Estate workers claim they have been exploited

For several years, nearly 1,000 workers at 24 hot-rolling steel plants in the Wazirpur Industrial Estate worked 12-hour shifts under inhuman conditions. They toiled day-in and day-out, without a single day off. But then in February last year they went on strike and forced the factory owners to concede to a weekly holiday on Wednesdays.

Since then, the workers have been demanding minimum wages, job cards certifying them as bona fide employees and enrolment in the Employees’ State Insurance (ESI) scheme which will provide them a measure of health care coverage.

After their demands evinced no response, these workers banded together again this past Wednesday and struck work. 

With furnaces not firing at these hot-rolling factories – where iron blocks are converted into steel – hundreds of other factories in the area are also in danger of shutting down. The steel from the ancillary hot-rolling plants is the raw material used to manufacture steel utensils and other appliances. And the striking workers claim that stocks of raw steel are rapidly dwindling.

Rajeshwar Singh, a mason, has worked in the hot-rolling plants for 10 years now. “While masons get Rs.8,500 monthly, helpers are paid Rs.6,000. We work 12 hours daily, but don’t get overtime wages. Yesterday, the proprietors tried to mollify us with a Rs.1,500 hike but that is still not at par with the minimum wages. When we take leave, we forego our pay,” rues Rajeshwar.

The extreme heat spawned by the furnaces forces the workers to take half-hour breaks and makes them sickness-prone. “For every half-hour we work, we have to rest for 30-minutes to recoup our strength. Every worker drinks one bottle of water every hour. In the summer, it gets even worse,” says Babloo Prasad.

On Monday, the workers staged a protest outside Deputy Labour Commissioner S. C. Yadav’s office at Nimri Colony in Ashok Vihar. Mr. Yadav has marked the workers’ complaints to a Labour Inspector to investigate. On Wednesday, labour officials will meet both workers and proprietors to chalk out a compromise.

Mr. Yadav told the workers that his office can only take up their denial of minimum wage grievance. “For the absence of your name on muster rolls, you will have to complain to the Factory Inspectorate at 5 Shamnath Marg. For the failure to be enrolled in the ESI scheme, the complaint rests with the Central Government under which the ESI Corporation comes,” he told them.

The protesters claim that each hot-rolling plant has between 30 and 40 workers. The Factories Act defines a factory as a unit which has 10 employees working with the aid of power, or 20 employees working without the aid of power.

Community organiser Raghuraj and the workers he has helped band together have a tough choice to make in the days ahead – the lengthy bureaucratic process of filing complaints, waiting for an inquiry and official action, or the difficult and uncertain path of pressuring owners to concede to their demands by continuing the strike.

With the shadow of police action hovering over them, Rajeshwar says: “We are not scared of anyone anymore. We have been exploited for far too long.” 

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/workers-steel-for-a-better-deal/article4622743.ece

Two bonded child labourers rescued

Child helpline rescues; police arrest one accused

Two bonded child labourers were rescued by the District Child helpline and handed over to the Child Welfare Committee (CWC). Police arrested M. Ariamuthu (48), who had ‘bought’ the two boys to work as goatherds for three years.

The boys were forced to drop out of school and were working as goatherds with Ariamuthu, who owned about 500 goats, a year and a half, when one of them escaped and arrived here on March 26.

Ariamuthu, who hails from Mariyur village in Kadaladi block, was arrested under Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code, read with Section 16 of the Bonded Labour System Abolition Act, 1976. He was produced before a magistrate court and remanded in judicial custody, police said.

Police said the 12-year-old boy Vinoth Kumar was wandering around the new bus stand on the night of March 26, when he was rescued by Child Helpline service officials. The boy told the officials that he had escaped from Thozhuvooranai, about 12 kms from here, where he was herding goats.

On information provided by him, the officials, with the help of police, rescued another boy, Muthu (13), hailing from Puravikadu in Thanjavur district. District Child Welfare Committee (CWC) Chairperson R. Sakunthala told The Hindu that CWC has taken custody of the two boys and admitted them at a home here.

As both the boys were interested in pursuing their studies, the CWC will make arrangements to admit them in schools in the coming academic year, she said. Vinoth Kumar is a 4 standard dropout and Muthu, dropped out after 6 standard.

Vinoth Kumar, who is an orphan, said he and his elder brother were sold for Rs 55,000 to Ariamuthu by their relatives to raise money for the marriage of their sister. She got married two years ago and it appears to be a child marriage, Ms Sakunthala said.

Efforts are on to trace his elder brother Ajith Kumar (16), who is working as a bonded labourer near Erwadi. Their two younger brothers are presently with their grandmother. The CWC will provide them care after obtaining custody of the boys, she said.

Source:http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/two-bonded-child-labourers-rescued/article4564091.ece

Loading the dice against workers

The resistance of workers and trade unions to pension “reforms” rests on their contention that they are aimed at transferring the responsibility of social security from the government to the market.

At the heart of the issue is the National Pension System (NPS), the new over-arching framework for the new pension regime that, since 2010, also includes the Swavalamban scheme for the vast mass of unorganised workers.

Redefining social security

Ever since the National Democratic Alliance government initiated the “reforms” in the pension sector, the trade unions have taken exception to two key aspects of the new regime, which is being steered by the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA).

The first — and perhaps most contentious issue — pertains to the very nature of what a pension is.

The unions regard the new system as one that marks a fundamental shift from a “defined benefit” system to a “contributory” scheme.

Traditionally, pensions in India were based on a system in which the worker could predict with a fair degree of accuracy his/her income stream upon retirement. Both contributions and the monthly income streams were usually defined as a fraction of the workers’ salary under the “defined benefit” system.

The unions argue that the changeover to a “defined contribution” system is not merely a shift in the methodology used to calculate pensions but is philosophically grounded in the notion that the markets — not the government — ought to serve as the vehicle for the delivery of this important social security benefit.

They point to Supreme Court rulings, which stated that pensions were not a bounty; that they are a reward for services rendered by a worker during his productive span; and that they are an instrument of social welfare and social justice, a worthy objective even if only a small fraction of the Indian workers had access to it.

Market fundamentalism

The second issue, which pertains to the government’s ‘abdication’ of its responsibility to the working class, is the push of pension funds governed by the PFRDA to a market-based system, says S. Prasanna Kumar, general secretary, Karnataka State Committee of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU). Workers who need to make a mandatory contribution of 10 per cent of their salary to their own pensions are at the mercy of fund managers, many of them in the private sector, he observes.

The immediate implication of a market-based approach, which the Left alleges is based on a Working Paper on pensions published by the International Monetary Fund more than a decade ago, is that workers no longer have a clear visibility of their likely income stream after they retire.

Tales of scam

Mr. Prasanna Kumar points out that the many tales of pension scams from across the world — from the advanced countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom to developing countries such as Chile and Argentina, which embraced market-based pension ‘reforms’ — do not inspire confidence that workers’ contributions will either be safe or yield a “decent return at the end of their long working life.”

“The logic that workers’ long-term committed contributions cannot be entitled to any kind of assured returns is based on market fundamentalism,” he argues. This strict no-no arises from the logic of not only delinking the government from a critical component of social security, but is premised on the misplaced but abiding faith in markets.

Unfair to workers

Even if the notion that pensions are part of a government’s larger social objective is jettisoned, the new system is unfair even in purely financial terms because it fails to balance the interests of the workers with those who manage the pensions. Critics of the NPS argue that while workers are mandatorily required to commit savings throughout their working life, the managers are not obliged to guarantee anything in return. This implies that the workers bear the burden of uncertain returns.

Trade unions argue that Swavalamban could derail quickly for the same reason. The PFRDA prescribes several user fees and charges, which are expected to account for a significant proportion of the workers’ contribution, even under Swavalamban, which is specifically targeted at the weakest segment of the working class.

These fund managers are expected to function like Mutual Funds, which in India have demonstrated a high mortality rate. No wonder, the trade unions even have their own description for the NPS: the National Pauperisation Scheme.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/loading-the-dice-against-workers/article4564924.ece

‘Streamline the functioning of workers' welfare board’

Tamil Nadu AITUC Construction Workers Union has urged the State government to streamline the functioning of the Tamil Nadu Construction and Unorganised Sector Workers Welfare Board in the interest of workers.

The activities of the board have come to a standstill. This was brought to the notice of the government on several occasions by the trade unions, but there is no tangible improvement in the functioning of the board, a press statement of K. Suresh, district president of the union, issued here on Saturday said.

A large number of petitions seeking accident relief, delivery, marriage assistance, and pension are pending with the board for a long time. The unions have been demanding the board not to insist on the physical presence of the workers at the time of enrolment with the board. Giving scant respect to this demand, the board has directed the workers to appear in person for renewing their enrolment, he alleged and demanded the government to concede to their demands.

Source :http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Tiruchirapalli/streamline-the-functioning-of-workers-welfare-board/article4566897.ece