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September 2019

Delhi Government favours the Rich, Dalits to pay the price

On 3 September, the Delhi government announced a cabinet decision to expand the Jai Bhim Mukhyamantri Pratibha Vikas Yojana to all students of all castes who have completed Class X or Class XII from Delhi. Previously a welfare policy targeting Scheduled Caste students preparing for competitive examinations, the scheme has now been opened to students of all castes with a family income less than Rs 8 lakh annually. The national average annual income in 2018 was Rs.1.13 lakh. This thus does not quite represent the economically weaker section of society as is stated by governments. According to the recent study titled ‘State of Working India’, 82% of male and 92% of female workers earn less than ₹10,000 a month. If a person earns more than ₹50,000 a month, that person is in the top 1% of the national work-force in terms of earnings. Thus fixing Rs. 8 lakh as the annual income criteria allows even the top 1% of the income strata to apply for this scheme.

The scheme was introduced last year to provide financial assistance to SC students and the maximum financial assistance provided to any student was ₹40,000. In its 2018-19 budget, the Delhi government allocated ₹40 crore for this scheme. If the entire fund were to be used as financial assistance, 10,000 students could be extended this benefit. But with the expansion of the scheme and the increase in the financial assistance per student to Rs 1 lakh, the allocated budget can now be extended only to 4,000 students and not necessarily those in need of this financial assistance.

Finally, this scheme was previously under the Scheduled Castes/ Scheduled Tribes Welfare Department as it was aimed at SC students. However, even with the expansion of the scheme to all students on the basis of an income criteria, the allocation will still come from the same department. This means funds that allocated for SC/ST welfare will now be diverted for the use of non-SC/ST persons.

Policy News

Government forms committee to probe violation of Contract Labour Act at ports and docks

24 September 2019: Government has set up a six member committee to investigate rampant violation of Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970 across docks and ports. The members of the committee include representatives from the Ministry of Railways, Coal India, trade unions and employers with the secretary of the Central Advisory Contract Labour Board appointed as convener.

Third draft of Social Security Code tabled by Ministry of Labour

20 September 2019: Ministry of Labour and Employment circulated the third draft of Social Security Code for consultation and suggestions. In the proposed code government has done away with provision of universal coverage of social security schemes like Employee Provident Fund and Employee State Insurance. The code’s first draft was tabled in April, 2017 which proposed social security coverage for all including self-employed workers and workers in enterprises that employ less than 10 people.

MNREGA wages to be linked to annually updated consumer price indices

18 September 2019: Aiming to increase rural incomes so as to rejuvenate rural demand, the Government has decided to peg wages paid under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) to annually updated consumer price indices for rural areas (CPI-R) or agricultural labourers (CPI-AL) whichever is higher. According to the Periodic Labour Force Survey, market wages for men and women in 2017-18 were higher than MGNREGA wages by 74% and 21% respectively. At present, the national average wage of an MGNREGA worker is ₹178.44 per day, less than half of the ₹375 per day minimum wage recommended by a Labour Ministry panel earlier this year.

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Workers Unite to Win Your Rights!

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DoPT issues notice regarding equal pay for equal work

14 September 2019: Department of Personnel and Training has issued notice to all concerned departments to abide by the Supreme Court judgement in the case of Jagjit Singh & Ors. vs. State of Punjab and pay contract workers employed by Central government at par their permanent counterparts. Central government employs over 10 lakh contract workers.

Maharashtra: Government raises minimum wages for factory workers after 9 year gap

9 September 2019: The Maharashtra government has doubled the minimum wages of factory workers after a nine year gap. The last minimum wage committee was formed in the year 2010. The revised monthly minimum wages are as follows:

Area A Area B Area C

Unskilled ₹ 10,350 ₹ 9,705 ₹ 9,000

Semi-Skilled ₹ 11,445 ₹ 10,800 ₹ 10,160

Skilled ₹ 12,605 ₹ 11,770 ₹ 11,255Revised wages will be applicable in over 3,700 factories in the state and over 25 lakh factory workers.

Assam: Government to subsidize medical care in tea plantations

25 September 2019: The Assam government will provide 142 essential drugs, 47 surgical items, 45 consumables/linens and six disinfectants free of cost to the 651 tea garden hospitals in the state. According to the Plantation Labour Act, 1951 maintenance of tea garden hospitals and healthcare of workers are the responsibility of the employer and/or the owner of plantation. The scheme will further subsidize tea plantations that have been denying workers a fair minimum wage and bonus while amassing huge profits themselves. An amount of ₹20 crore has been earmarked for the scheme.

Legal News

Assam: Labour Commissioner takes Wipro to court for violating Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act

29 September 2019: Labour Commissioner’s office in Assam has acted on a complaint

of contract data entry operators employed by Wipro in Guwahati, Assam for executing National Register of Citizens (NRC) project. The company did not obtain a contractor’s license mandatory for employing contract workers under the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1971. It further siphoned wages of contract workers and paid them less than the ₹14,500 per month mandated by the government.

Supreme Court reprimands government for Safai Karamchari deaths

18 September 2019: Hearing a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) concerning death of safai karamcharis while cleaning manholes and sewers, the bench of Justice Arun Mishra, MR Shah and BR Gavai reprimanded the central government for its inaction in putting safety measures in place. The Supreme Court had called for criminalisation of entry into sewers without safety equipment in March 2014 and ordered the government to pay ₹10 lakh as compensation to the families of the deceased. After 5 years, Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry, in July 2019, issued a circular to all states and union territories to set up Emergency Response Sanitation Units in major cities. The bench rapped Attorney General KK Venugopal for this delay saying ‘nowhere in the world do people get sent to gas chambers to die’.

Punjab: High Court convicts police officers for killing protesting workers

16 September 2019: On 25 October 1991, police opened fire on workers peacefully protesting at the gate of Bhawani Cotton Mill, Abohar killing eight and severely injuring eighteen other workers. After twenty-seven years, a bench of Justice Rajiv Sharma and Justice Harinder Singh Sidhu of the Punjab and Haryana High Court has ruled that the police were negligent in discharge of their duties and in firing on an unarmed peaceful gathering of workers which violated the fundamental rights of the workers. The Bench also modified conviction of three accused police officers from murder to culpable homicide and suo motu ordered compensation to the families of the victims with 9% interest from the date of the incident between ₹2Lakh to ₹3Lakh. Court has ordered that the compensation be paid within three

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Collective Bargaining

Coal workers launch a countrywide strike against government’s decision to allow 100% FDI in mining

24 September 2019: Over 5 Lakh workers of Coal India Limited (CIL) and Singareni Colliaries Company Limited (SCCL) struck work to protest government’s decision to allow 100% Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in mining. CIL and SCCL are successful PSUs and the unions have been opposing government’s move to privatise it since 2015 when the government first enacted the Coal Mines (Special) Provision Act, 2015, allowing private players to produce and sell coal at their own administered price. It has also diluted public holdings in the CIL by disinvesting nearly 35% of the government-held shares.

Karnataka: Garment workers demand ₹15,000 minimum wage

12 September 2019: Over 5,000 garment workers under the banner of Garment and Textile Workers Union (GATWU) held a protest in front of the labour department in Bengaluru on 12 September 2019 demanding revision in minimum wages from existing ₹8,000 per month to ₹15,000 per month. In 2018 the government has issued a draft notification promising an increase from the existing rate to ₹12,250 per month. However, due to pressure from garment manufacturers the government did not issue any notice for its implementation.

Workplace Safety Watch

Sanitation

On 27 Sept., 3 workers Happy, Dhoni and Badrinath died of asphyxiation when they entered to clean an oil tanker in a private oil refinery in Abohar. A case under sections 304 (culpable homicide) and 34 (common intent) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) has been filed against the 3 owners Sher Singh, Gursevak Singh and Lalit Bansal.

On 25 Sept., 3 workers Asuruddin (24), Akmot Ali (20) and Rofiqul Islam (34) died of asphyxiation when they entered a 13 feet underground septic tank for cleaning in an under construction building in Barpeta, Assam.

On 24 Sept., Afroz and Imran died of asphyxiation when they entered a sump of an under-construction site in the Raidurgam area of Hyderabad. Shiva Kumar, owner of the under-construction building has been booked under Section 174 of Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) for suspicious death.

On 5 Sept., Vijayendra Bagdi (36) and Jagdish Parmar (54) drowned while trying to drain out rainwater in Goregaon, Mumbai.

Manufacturing

On 26 Sept., Raja Shaikh (18) died after his leg was entangled in a service lift’s cable that was accidentally started by another worker. Raja was working on the 16th floor of the under-construction building in Mulund, Mumbai without any safety equipment. Also, no safety measure mandated for construction and repair of elevators was followed by the employer.

On 16 Sept., Jogi Ram Manjhi (22), Sujit Kumar Dhurve (28) and Raja Ratre (27) died of electrocution while they were fitting LED lights on top of a long iron pipe which accidently touched the 11KV high power transmission line at the Aarav Fly Ash Brick Factory in Bhalunara village, Raigarh.

On 4 Sept., 23 workers were killed and 27 injured in a blaze in a firecracker factory at Batala town in Gurdaspur district of Punjab. The factory was running out of a three storey building in a residential area without any license.

On 3 Sept., 3 CISF fire personnel Eranna Nayakka, Satish Prasad Kushwaha, and M K Paswan and resident production superintendent C N Rao of the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation died while they were trying to douse a fire that broke out in the storm water drainage at ONGC’s Uran Plant.

Construction

On 18 Sept., Ramkanya (25) and Ganga (28) died of electrocution after coming in contact with 11KV high transmission wire while working on a terrace of an under construction building in the Housing Board Colony, Pratapgarh, Udaipur. Police have registered a case of negligence against the contractor at the behest of the electricity department.

On 16 Sept., Nizam and Tahir died while Pappu,

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Ikram, Gita and Ameer got injured as the wall of an under construction cold storage building collapsed on them in Kannauj, Uttar Pradesh.

On 15 Sept., Harish Chand (39) was killed while Sunil Ram (37) sustained injuries when a rock fell on them while they were working at the Mumbai Metro’s phase 3 tunnel site between Powai and SEEPZ. This is the second death of a worker during construction of Metro in Mumbai.

On 6 Sept., Sanjay Singh (21) was killed and 13 others were injured after a lift fell from the 10th to the 7th floor. All workers were employed at a Delhi Development Authority (DDA) construction site in Narela, Outer North Delhi and were working on DDA’s category II houses in Sectors A1 to A4. The DDA outsources building these 25-storey buildings to a private company called Ahluwalia Contracts Private Limited.

On 6 Sept., Somnath Mahantu (20) died after hit by debris of a breaking slab of concrete at a construction site in Mahadevnagar area, Pune. Police have registered a case of culpable homicide against the site engineer and the supervisor of the project.

Other

On 24 Sept., Rattan Lal (65) and Rajinder Kumar (40) were killed and 4 others, Gurnam Singh, Manjit Singh, Tarsem Lal, Vijay Gurlal were grievously injured due an explosion emerged from a heap of scrap they were sorting. Gurnam Singh had bought the scrap from the Cantonment Police Station, Amritsar Punjab which contained crackers that police had seized a few days earlier.

News from Around the World

Greece: Workers hold countrywide general strike against proposed changes in labour laws

24 September 2019: Ships, trains, buses did not ply while offices remained shut across Greece as workers struck work against Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s proposed changes in labour laws which would amend rules for calling a strike, allow non-implementation of collective working agreements under some conditions and set up an online registry of trade

unions. The government has also proposed a National Programme for Simplification of Procedure to ensure fast-track licensing for major investments and disciplinary action against workers who delay permissions. Trade unions have announced wider and joint action in coming days if the government doesn’t roll back the online registration rule which is aimed at increasing government snooping and surveillance of trade union activities.

US: 48,000 workers of General Motors strike work, demand share in profit

16 September 2019: Over 48,000 workers of General Motors (GM) have struck work demanding better pay and working conditions under the banner of United Auto Workers (UAW) union. Real wages of GM workers has fallen 16% since 1990. To stifle the strike management discontinued worker’s healthcare contributions on 18 September 2019. Negotiations between the union and management are underway.

Corporate Watch

On 23 September 2019, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) issued a directive to Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative Bank (PMC) restricting withdrawals of all depositors to only Rs. 1,000 each for a period of 6 months. No reasons were stated nor any explanation offered in the RBI press release issued the next day. Over 3 lakh depositors, spread over 6 states were shocked by this development. The latest audited financials of PMC showed the bank to be in good health and the PMC was reputed to be one of the top 5 cooperative banks in the country.

News reports over the next few days revealed that a massive scam where over 73% of PMC’s loans were to a single Mumbai based real-estate company named Housing Development and Infrastructure Limited (HDIL). The Bank of India had initiated insolvency proceedings against HDIL in early August 2019 for the recovery of a debt of around Rs. 520 crore. HDIL owed PMC a loan of Rs. 6,500 crores. This loan had gone bad over two years ago and was over 4 times the amount that the bank could lend to a single borrower.

Simultaneously, news emerged that the scam was not just an ordinary case of a loan going

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bad. The PMC managing director, Joy Thomas, in a letter to the RBI admitted that he and some board members knowingly spread the HDIL loan over 21,049 fake accounts so that it would not attract attention of the auditors, regulators and other board members. Waryam Singh was a director at HDIL before he joined as the PMC bank Chairman. HDIL promoter Rakesh Wadhawan and Singh had even started a firm that breeds r a c e h o r s e s together! The nexus between the bank and borrower is clearly evident.

These revelations enraged depositors who feared the loss of their savings. The average size of deposits at the PMC Bank was roughly Rs. 10,000, which indicates that the majority of the bank’s depositor base was from among working people. On the other hand, the owners of HDIL, Rakesh and his son Sarang Wadhawan, owns assets worth 3,500 crore which includes a 5 acre property worth Rs. 70 crore in the Mumbai suburbs, over Rs. 60 crore worth of jewellery, 12 expensive cars worth a few crores each, along with two nine-seater personal aircrafts and a speed-boat. HDIL was also one of the sponsors of the IPL team, Kolkata Knight Riders. A yacht worth around Rs 200 crore belonging to Wadhawans was found anchored in the Maldives. The ED will be writing to Maldivian authorities to seize and bring the yacht to India. Meanwhile, properties of Wadhawans in Gulf countries and the United Kingdom are being traced. Once found, they will also be attached after the due procedure.

As days went on, irate depositors protested and forced the RBI to relax restrictions. Rs. 1,000 was first increased to Rs. 10,000 and then to Rs. 25,000. The RBI even declared that with withdrawal limits at Rs. 25,000, over 70% of depositors could withdraw their entire savings.

The PMC-HDIL scam points to two greater problems:

The first concerns the regulation of banking and financial institutions. All these institutions are regulated by the RBI which is clearly failing in its task. Cooperative banks also face some scrutiny from the Registrar of Cooperatives of the appropriate state. In Maharashtra alone around 165 cooperative banks that have failed

in the last 30 years. Partly to blame for this is also the large degree of influence local politicians and political parties have in the running of cooperative banks.

The second is the dreadful state of the construction and real estate sector. Construction is the single largest employer in the country after agriculture and the

general slowdown of the economy has greatly impacted construction activity. Over 13 lakh houses worth Rs. 9.38 lakh crore are unsold across India. This amounts to around 5% of country’s gross domestic product and is more than the gross state domestic products of most states including Kerala, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, and is almost double that of Bihar. Mumbai alone, which was HDIL’s sole area of operation has 3.7 lakh unsold housing units.

This not to say that HDIL going bankrupt is only due to a slowdown in construction and real estate sector or the general economy as a whole. Or to imply that this slowdown caused PMC to lend a single company 73% of its loans, hide that amount across 20,000 fake accounts or place a former HDIL person as its chairman.