The Life of Labour: AAP Government Wants to Stop Outsourcing Labour to Private Agencies

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No to outsourcing: AAP government in Delhi proposes to end the outsourcing of support staff

The Delhi government has planned to end contractualisation of government support staff, like drivers, security guards, data entry operators and other multi-tasking jobs. This has been proposed in order to improve the working conditions and social security of workers while also reducing the tax burden to the government due to payments to manpower sourcing companies. The decision was made after a meeting of the Delhi Contract Labour Advisory Board. The minister for labour, Gopal Rai, said that while the contract system leads to loss of PF for the workers due to non-payment by contracting firms, it also increases human resource costs for the government due to the tax payment on availing such services. While the workers welcome this labour welfare measure, it is not clear whether the plan will go through due to the political standoff between the LG and the government over staffing decisions.

Illustration by Aliza Bakht

After 8 days of agitation, truck owners call off strike

The 8-day long truckers strike that worried the Industry and trade circles came to an end on Friday after the government agreed to appoint a committee under the Road Transport and Highways secretary to look into the demands of truck owners to bring Diesel under GST and reduce toll taxes. By the fourth day of the strike, the accumulated losses to the transport sector due to the strike was estimated at Rs. 16,000 cr. There was also a concern in the industry at the dwindling stocks. In this context, the Road Transport and Highways department and the All India Motor Transport Congress, that had called the strike, struck a deal to move forward on the demands raised by AIMTC resulting in the withdrawal of the strike.

Fruits of struggle: Tamil Nadu contract workers win wage hike

The Tamil Nadu government has hiked the wages of contract nurses to Rs. 14,000 a month from the earlier Rs 7,000. The Minister of Health has also assured an annual increase of Rs. 500. This comes after a spirited struggle by contract workers who had struck work and gathered at the Department of Medical Science campus in Chennai, in November 2017. The strike had been widely successful until the High Court intervened threatening action against the nurses under The Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA). Even while the strike was withdrawn, the pressure put up by the nurses and their united struggle has borne fruit with the government relenting partially to their demands and assuring certain benefits such as ESI.

500 workers of the Rubber Corporation of Tamil Nadu arrested for demanding a wage hike

Tamil Nadu has been seeing a spate of arrests and intimidatory action by the government against any form of protest and dissent. Over 500 workers and their supporters including two MLAs were arrested when they protested against the Rubber Corporation demanding a wage hike that offers at least Rs. 18,000 a month. After the trade unions held talks with the Tamil Nadu Rubber Corporation and the State Government on 32 occasions for increased wages, the government agreed for a hike of Rs. 23 a day while the trade unions demanded a minimum salary of Rs. 18,000 a month. They are presently getting Rs 422 a day including DA. over 1700 contract workers are employed by the Rubber Corporation across its plantations.

Sanitation workers call off the strike in Ahmedabad

In 2016, along with Jignesh Melvani, the sanitation workers of Ahmedabad won a historic victory against the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation after a violent and difficult struggle. The Wire reported then that, “In the course of the 36-day strike, the workers were threatened with termination, detained numerous times by the police, manhandled while protesting for their demands, and had FIRs filed against them.” In 2018, events seem to have come to a head again. This week, the sanitation workers of Ahmedabad went on strike again. Around 13,000 workers launched an indefinite strike with a number of demands including that employee benefits are paid to the daily wage workers as well. But this time, the new Municipal Commissioner Vijay Nehra seems to have fought back hard in the media to control the narrative.

Nehra is reported to have categorically stated that the strike is really about the corporation insisting on attendance. “We have made it clear that demands cannot be made at gunpoint,” Nehra told Times of India. The Week has reported that “Nehra had taken to Twitter to say #SayNoToBlackmail. He said 25 per cent employees remain absent in the mornings and the ratio is 60 per cent in the afternoons.” The workers have denied this. Now, according to ToI, the workers have called off the strike after the corporation suspended 60 workers. The workers have claimed that the corporation has agreed to look into their demands.

Updates and other news

Punjab BSNL workers on hunger strike

The three-day relay hunger strike being observed by the BSNL employees entered its third and final day on Thursday. The protesting BSNL employees raised slogans against the government for not paying heed to their long-pending demands. The strike was being observed by various unions and associations of the BSNL including BSNLEU, SNEA, NFTE and AIBSNLEA. Twenty members of the BSNL employees’ union sat on hunger strike on the final day of the relay hunger strike. Major demands include wage revision, revision of pension, allotment of 4G spectrum to BSNL and pension contribution on actual basic pay among others. The union leaders have alleged that the government is strangling the public sector enterprise by not releasing 4G allotments.

Why health workers, paid Rs. 4,000 per month, are vital to India’s National Nutrition Mission.

Some of the crucial aspects of our national health mission are carried out by workers who are paid minimum wages or lower. This article in India Spend chronicles the work of Poshan Sakhis (nutrition buddies) in UP, the challenges they and the Anganwadi workers face in their mission and the mismatch between expected outcomes and infrastructure offered. IndiaSpend documents conditions where the health centres and Anganwadis lack even basic sanitation facilities. Taking us through the work life of a few Poshan Sakis and Anganwadi workers, the article maps the landscape in which these workers deliver India’s grand plans for improving acute malnourishment and other critical health indicators such as the prenatal and antenatal health of mothers and infants. In spite of these challenges, these workers are the frontline in this mission, the bridge between the people and the government. It is important to provide them with the right motivation and equip them well.

International news

Starbucks, others must pay workers for off clock work: Court

The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that employers “must pay workers for minutes they routinely spend off the clock on tasks such as locking up or setting the store alarm.” Despite this being a small amount of time, the Court has argued that it adds up over time. “That is enough to pay a utility bill, buy a week of groceries, or cover a month of bus fares,” Associate Justice Goodwin Liu wrote. “What Starbucks calls `de minimis’ is not de minimis at all to many ordinary people who work for hourly wages.”

Struggle against Amazon reveals the potential of workers’ unity in Europe

Amazon faced a severe round of workers’ struggle in Europe, dubbed the largest it has faced in its history. From Spain, through Germany to Poland, workers in the ‘fulfilment centres’ of Amazon coordinated a three-day strike that significantly dented Amazon’s business operations in Europe. While struggles have happened in these centres before, this was the first coordinated strike that revealed the potential of unified action by workers across the European Union. After a successful strike by German workers in 2013, which forced Amazon to provide periodic wage increases and improved work conditions, Amazon began to move into eastern Europe to take advantage of the lower wages and lax labour laws. However, German and Polish workers began cross-border discussions on these issues to forge joint action. "We [did not want to be] used as scabs, with health and safety laws and our rights neglected, so that Amazon could ignore the strikes in other fulfilment centres," says Malinowska, who was part of these initiatives coordinated by ‘Workers Initiative’ a radical movement of workers in Poland. Using innovative strategies of struggle, the Polish workers saw to it that the German struggle was not undermined by Amazon moving work to Poland. Similar coordinated struggles were launched in support of Spanish workers and Italian workers. Spanish workers even called for a Europe-wide strike. This shows that while companies might leverage infrastructure and trade laws to undermine workers’ struggles, workers can forge unified action restoring the balance of action. According to one of the members of these initiatives, ‘Amazon is a global company, we have to do the same’.

Weekend Reads

Labour relations in China: Some frequently asked questions

The China Labour Bulletin, whose mission is to support the workers’ movement in China, has published a list of frequently asked questions about the state of labour laws and movements in the country. This includes questions about workers’ rights, freedom of association and the right to strike.

These photos show some of the most extreme working conditions in the world, from inside an active volcano to a deadly mine

From sulphur miners in Indonesia who work inside an active volcano to sand divers in Cameroon, these photos are not only visually arresting but they are also documents of the day-to-day danger that many workers struggle with, usually in precarious, informal work. Read more here.

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