Southern textiles sector to tilt more towards female staff

The southern textile industry prefers to employ a larger number of women than men and the recent amendment of the Factories Act 1948 is expected to tilt this even more in their favour.

Vijay Venkataswamy, chairman, Southern India Mills Association (Sima) said that the textile mills that have come up in the last five years are increasingly employing women, with the proportion going up to an extent of 60 to 80 per cent of the total workforce.

However, Sima officials said that there were no statistics regarding the number of women workers being employed by textile mills.

Venkataswamy said the textile mills find employing men riskier as they form trade unions and disrupt work which was one of the reasons for the closure of many textile mills in Coimbatore few years ago.

Sima has about 300 members, of which as many as 240 members are in Tamil Nadu, and the remaining are spread across Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala.

Tamil Nadu alone accounts for 40 per cent of India's total cotton yarn export that is estimated to be close to Rs 6,000 crore in 2003-04.

Allowing women to work from 10 pm to 6 am will, to an extent, offset the shortage of workforce faced by the textile industry to meet the export order arising from the phasing out of the multi-fibre agreement (MFA), Venkataswamy added.

Manikam Ramaswami, chairman, Loyal Textile Mills, points out that women workers are more productive than men as they have more dexterity required while handling garments.

Women also prefer to work for shorter tenure (three years on an average) than men, which is considered a better option by textile mills, he said.

Under the contract agreement, workers are paid a lump sum cash of Rs 30,000 to Rs 35,000 at the end of the third year depending upon their work performance while they get paid a daily wage of Rs 45 to Rs 110.

This is the critical factor in attracting women to work in textile mills in Coimbatore, Karur and Dindugal areas of Tamil Nadu.

The women workers generally come in from places such as Madurai, Thanjavur, Tirunelveli, Cuddalore, Salem and Erode, he added. It is found that women who work in these textile mills are mostly in the age group between 18 and 25 years.

This explains the fact that these women consider the lump sum cash as a saving for their marriage.

However, A Sakthivel, chairman of Apparel Export Promotion Council and Federation of Indian Export Organsation southern region, said prior to the amendment of the Factory Act, women had been working till 9 pm in textile mills with adequate safeguards provided.

The new amendment in Factory Act 1948 is just a legislation that the government has passed, he added.