India, as people are being constantly told now, fetched the tag of the fastest growing economy having strong macroeconomic fundamentals with an average Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of 7.2 percent, a comfortable current account deficit with an average of 1 and 2 percent of GDP and also a general government fiscal deficit under control. On the contrary, India is also amongst the 10 worst countries in terms of workers’ rights in 2020, according to the International Trade Union Confederation. Apart from workers’ rights, India has earned the stigma of being the deadliest country with an extremely high record of industrial accidents and as per ILO, India has the highest accident rate among construction workers in the world with 165 of 1,000 injured on their job. Another study shows accidents involving construction workers in the country kill 38 to 73 labourers every day.
More than 100 workers lost their lives at India’s top companies in industrial accidents in 2022-23, regulatory disclosure shows. Thirty-three of the BSE50 companies, as on March 31, 2023 (excluding banking, financial services and IT) reported a combined 101 deaths related to work in FY 23, about half of the 211 in FY 22. The fatalities include all kinds of labour at work: on roll, contractual, and the third party. The 33 companies had a combined strength of 2.9 million and for some; the contract workers were not included in the muster roll. India had 363,442 registered factories in 2020 of which 84% were operational and employed 20.3 million workers. On average, 1,109 deaths and more than 4,000 injuries were reported each year. Between 2017 and 2020, three workers died and 11 injured each day, on average, due to accidents in India’s registered factories, as per the Ministry of Labour & Employment Directorate General Factory Advice Service and Labour Institutes (DGFASLI) in November 2022 through a Right to Information request issued by India Spend. In 2021, the Labour Ministry informed the Parliament that at least 6,500 employees had died while working at factories, ports, mines and construction sites in the preceding 5 years. Trade Unions however contradict this figure and claim that this might be much higher as many incidents are not reported. The saddest part of the story is, as many as 3,331deaths were recorded between 2018 and 2020, but only 14 people were imprisoned for offences under the Factories Act, 1948, during the same period, data reveals. DGFASLI collects occupational safety & health (OSH) statistics from State Chief Inspectors of Factories and Directors of Industrial Safety and Health. This data reflects only registered factories, although about 90% of workers in India are employed in the informal sector.
Every year, India registers death of hundreds of workers due to lack of safety measures in factories and construction sites. The number increases for workers who lose their eyesight, fingers or hands. Less than 0.4 percent of cases where employers don’t abide by any safety regulations result in punishment for offenders. Textiles, Manufacturing and construction industries are examples where thousands of workers are impaired for a lifetime. These workplace tragedies force numerous working people to live their remainder of lives handicapped, visionless or without limbs. The compensations are never paid, families have to bear the financial burden after losing their sole bread – winner.
Construction is the second largest employer after agriculture providing jobs to more than 44 million people, contributing 9% to the national GDP, but ironically its workforce is more unprotected than any other industrial sectors. Data suggests, the possibility of fatalities is five times more in the construction industry than in a manufacturing industry and the risk of a major injury is 2.5 times higher. A British Safety Council Study revealed that not only do construction workers in India enjoy no legal protection, their on-site deaths are 20 times higher than those in Britain, 25% of the deaths every year result from falling from a height and nearly 80% work in unsafe conditions. Gujarat, one of the most industrialised states in India, accounts for more than one in five injuries and fatalities in factories and most injuries and deaths were reported in chemical and chemical product sectors in 2019 as per Gujarat DGFASLI data. Gujarat accounts for 13% of all construction sector investment in the country, next only to Maharashtra (25%)—the number of deaths as a result of fatal falls were 137 in 2018, the highest in a decade. As contractors paid scant respect to abide by the safety, security measures, coupled by the government’s laxity to inspect the site, these accidents have become a regular feature in this state. Apart from fatal accidents, the construction workers run the risk of inflicting several occupational diseases including dermatitis, asbestosis, silicosis, musculo-skeletal disorder, respiratory diseases which eventually lead to disability and slow death.
Indian Parliament was informed, 400 workers died while cleaning septic tanks and sewers in the country between 2018-2023.As per the Prohibition Of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act,2013 manual scavenging is prohibited in the country. But the authorities don’t bother about implementation of the Act.
Thousands of workers losing their hands and fingers every year is leading to “human misery” and “ loss of labour productivity” in the industry and the country, said CRUSHED 2022, report by Safe In India Foundation (SII), a Manesar based organisation focused on auto workers’ safety. The SII report, published in December 2022 analysed injuries and accidents in the auto sector in six states. Many of the workers in the auto hubs are migrants and are not adequately trained, forced to work for longer hours sans overtime but underpaid, the report mentioned. Though the behemoth auto sector contributes 7% of the national GDP and about half of the Indian Manufacturing GDP, they are least bothered about the safety security of the workers, or of a safe secure workplace. Thousands of workers have been losing their hands and fingers in these auto sectors for years together. 50% injured workers report more than 12 hours shifts, 6 days a week, not fully paid for overtime. 80% of injured workers from the auto hub of Haryana reported working on machines without safety sensors at the time of accident and power press machines.
Several types of industrial injuries, circumstances, employment were conveniently thrown in the backburner and written off the law. The framing of compensation as a ‘liability’, instead of a social insurance, was counter-productive, as employers indulged in several mischievous methods to evade responsibility to pay the injured or dead worker. The case of Union Carbide is a grim reminder. Despite being one of the most catastrophic industrial accidents in the world, the process of negotiating the compensation settlement by the Government of India was fraught with corruption, backroom dealings, victim blackmailing etc. As a result, the settlement that was agreed upon was appallingly low considering the chronic nature of illnesses that were inflicted upon several generations. In exchange, Union Carbide was exempted from all criminal liabilities, and according to its annual report, 1989, the year of this settlement, is described as its “best financial year” on record. (International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal 2019)!
The Modi Government has come forward with four labour codes, premised upon ‘ease of doing business’, turning around the principle that the heart of labour law is the concept of unequal partners that results from the class relationship between employers & employees which was recognised in a Supreme Court Judgement in Central Inland Water Transport Corp. vs Brojo Nath. The changes in labour laws are meant to place more relaxations on the already fragile social security for workers and give more autonomy to evade the checks and balances for standards of safety. A glaring dilution in the Occupational Safety Health Working Condition (OSHWC) Code is the dilution of the role of labour inspectors. Labour inspectors have now been christened as ‘inspectors cum facilitators’. The entire inspection mechanism has been watered down such that inspectors can no longer conduct surprise checks in workplaces without the employer’s permission. They can no longer prosecute an employer with immediate effect on finding an offence but are to advise, “provide information” and even exempt an employer from punitive action by giving them a chance to correct the violation within a stipulated time period. This weakening of the inspection system goes against the ILO convention such as free entry at any time and without prior notice (Article 12). The OSHWC code has complicated the eight hour work day limit, an indispensably crucial right, that can exceed upon notification by the state or union government in the interest of “economic activities”. “employment opportunities” or “public emergencies” (Sec 127 and 128 OSHWC Code). The OSHWC Code has also diluted several threshold limits, for instance, its application is legitimate only when within factories using power and employing 20 workers or more and without power and employing 40 workers or more that were earlier 10 or and 20, thereby relieving numerous smaller production units under bigger companies. The Factory definition also has been changed from 20 to 40 workers for establishment without aid of electric power, and from 10 to 20 workers for using the aid of power. Less than a million or 1.4% of establish-ments in India have more than 10 workers, according to India’s 6th economic census conducted from January 2013 to April 2014. The OSH Code gives massive power to the employers to flout all the safety standards. Further, the new labour code has given blanket power to the Government to exempt any new establishment from IR and OSH Code. The code has diluted Chapter VIA of Factories Act, 1948. Sec 41 G under ‘‘Workers participation in Management” clearly stipulates that in every factory, where a hazardous process is employed, the occupier shall constitute a bipartite safety committee. The Code demolishes the statutory requirement of the constitution. Now, the Government, by a general or special order, may require any establishment or class of establishment to constitute a safety committee in the prescribed manner. The appointment of safety officers has been limited only to factories and building / construction sites employing 500 or more workers and 100 or more workers in case of mines.
Poor inspection rates have accentuated this ever-increasing trend of workplace disasters. In Maharashtra, 1,551 of 6,492 hazardous factories were inspected which means the inspection rate is abysmally low, only 23.89% in 2021. For the 39,255 registered factories, only 3,158 inspections took place, ie, 8.04%. This grim picture of inspection is also found in two other industrialised states, i.e., Tamil Nadu and Gujarat. In the former state, the general inspection rate was 17.04% and 25.39% for the hazardous factories. In Gujarat, it was 19.33% and 19.81% respectively. The all-India figure shows the respective inspection rate is 14.65% and 26.02% respectively. The appointment rate of sanctioned inspectors is terribly low and the all India figure is 67.58%. The prosecution rates are miserably poor, it was 6.95% in Gujarat, 13.84% in Maharashtra and 14.45% in Tamil Nadu.
Dismantling the labour laws, giving way for new labour codes will only hasten a more and more unsafe workplace, encouraging the employers to flout all the restrictions and by denuding the working class of their rights, the workplace would be more vulnerable in the entire country.
Courtesy: Frontier
Vol 57, No. 15 – 18, Oct 5 – Nov 2, 2024
