Ahmed Nisar has been making bags and jackets for the past 14 months at the factory of Orient Converse, one of the 500 garment units in an industrial enclave in Gurgaon in Haryana bordering New Delhi. Everyday he makes 450 to 480 bags or jackets for buyers as diverse and big as GAP, Adidas, Levis, Diesel and Bata and is one of the unsung contributors to the country’s garment export success story, which touched almost $11 billion last year .
He does not mind the 16 hours of work he puts in there every day nor the 24 hours at a stretch twice a week. What he does mind is the fact that, these days, he has to pay a fine of Rs 20 each time he uses the toilet. This is to ensure that targets are met and time is not wasted. Of course, toilet use is free twice a day. “We either have to pay the fine or we are given a token and the money is cut from our salary. It is about Rs 500 a month if we are not careful,’’ says Nisar and his friends, all of whom are contract workers hired by the factory.
Nisar and other workers, mostly migrants from Bihar, would not mind even this fate if they were being paid adequately. Nisar’s payslip indicates a salary of Rs 4,500. He says the figure is fake. He gets a salary of Rs 4,300, though as a skilled worker he is entitled to a minimum wage of Rs 5,000 by the Harayana government. His overtime pay is also just half of what he is due under the Factories Act. But there was no way the situation could be improved or changed because labour inspections apparently never took place there. “We have never met a labour inspector here,’’ say workers from Orient Converse.
The labour department in Gurgaon has eight officials, who, between them, can carry out only 60 inspections a month, according to Deputy Labour Commissioner Anuradha Lamba. So the 1,240 factories in the area are inspected once in two years if at all every factory is inspected. The norm in the labour departments countrywide is to have an inspector for every 350 factories, though this number increases to 500 factories. Haryana has 34 inspectors in all.
Trade unions like the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) and the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) had in a complaint to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) recently cited self-certification as a reason for lack of inspections in Haryana. But this is partially true. The ILO’s Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations had sent queries to the Haryana government on the impact of self-certification on inspections.
Factories that opt for self-certification provide information on their workers, wages and so on. But at present, this data collection is confined to the implementation of the Factories Act, which pertains to occupational health and safety of workers, Lamba says.
They do not cover the poor manpower strength and absence of any mechanism to detect wrongdoing. Both are violations of all the labour laws in India, the enforcement of which is dependent on inspections and also a violation of ILO Convention 81, which is one of the 41 conventions ratified by India.
In 2005, the state government informed the ILO Committee of Experts that a total of 2,505 inspections were conducted in a year.
In the absence of inspections, there is no way to detect violations in these factories, which contribute to the country’s economic growth significantly.
In 2007, a working group on labour laws set up by the Planning Commission examined the possibility of introducing self certification to end inspector raj or tyranny of inspectors, of which industry often complained and which the previous Congress-led government wanted to do away with.
But the group concluded that since there were few inspections, owing to poor manpower, inspector raj was a misnomer. It said though inspections should continue, self-certification should also be encouraged to promote transparency.
In the absence of inspections, the unions are expected to take the voice of the workers to the authorities. But unionising is forbidden in the factory. Any unionising is done surreptitiously, especially when workers are on contract as in the garment sector.
On a Sunday afternoon in October, a few workers from Orient Converse sneaked out early to attend a meeting called by the Majdoor Ekta Manch, a local labour platform that has been networking with garment factory workers. More workers with similar complaints joined from other factories like Viva Global and Modelama. They talked about long working hours, often up to 24 hours, payment below minimum wages, below the overtime rates allowed under the Factories Act, denial of annual bonus, denial of paid leave and dismissal without notice.
What is common to them is an absence of labour inspections and collective bargaining mechanisms in the factories.
The workers say the only inspection that takes place is from the buyers. “But we are told in advance what to tell the buyers. Or we would lose our jobs,’’ say workers.
Factory workers say labour inspections are a farce even when they do take place. At Viva Global, a garment factory in Gurgaon where a workers’ agitation is underway over demands to double overtime rates, the labour inspector told workers to quit rather than persist with their demands for a three-month notice stipulated in the Industrial Disputes Act. The workers are now looking to the district court in Haryana to give them a fair deal.
According to a representative of a top buyer in the garment industry, the only way labour law compliance can be ensured is through a multi-stakeholder platform that would protect the interests of all parties concerned. Government inspectors alone cannot be trusted with ensuring compliance, buyers point out.
