Workers of Maddur’s Shahi Exports Complain of Harassment, Walk Out of Factory in Protest
With the sexual harassment cells are inactive in the factories, sexual harassment of the women workers is rampant in the units
Around
2,000 workers of a unit of Shahi Exports at Maddur in Mandya district,
walked out of the factory to protest against the management on June 23,
2018. The protest that was staged demanding minimum wages, brought out
the level of harassment that the women working in the factory face.
Shahi
exports, Maddur, has more than 5,000 employees. The factory here has
many units in one compound; these units are specialised units for
stitching, washing, embroidery and knitting. Speaking to Newsclick, Jayaram, one of the union leaders of Garment and Textile Workers Union, present at the site, explained:
“We
had planned a protest for minimum wages in Mandya, but the CM had
called for a meeting, so we called off the meeting and decided to wait.
The workers were not happy with the developments around their minimum
wage and the conditions inside the factory. Adding to this was the
payment of only Dearness Allowances (DA) without any increment. Every
April the workers get DA; however, these companies do not pay them in
April but do in May or June along with all the arrears. Shahi Exports in
Maddur has paid DA this month, with no increment. All of this together
forced the workers to walk out of the factory and protest.”
The top-ranking officials of the management were in attendance at the protest site. The protesting workers made use of this opportunity to explain the incidents of harassment that they go through and the unhygienic working conditions that prevail in the factory. Jayaram noted that the workers complained about, “verbal abuse by the supervisors, unhygienic toilets that are cleaned only when the units are visited by the management, and unavailability of drinking water during the working hours.” He also pointed out that the workers demanded free sanitary pads from the management.
As Divya, a worker in this factory for last four years,
“the Garment factories, in general, employ thousands of women”.
Nationally, between 60–80% of the workers are women. The women in the
industry are subjected to sexual harassment and other forms of
harassment. According to her, Shahi Exports in Maddur alone has employed
six thousand women from the villages around Maddur and Mandya and the
employees are exploited and harassed by the male colleagues in slightly
higher positions. Kavitha Rani, another worker also pointed out that
they work under tremendous pressure to reach production targets.
Harassment of women working in Shahi Exports Maddur
A study conducted
by Garment Labour Union (GLU) and a local NGO Munnade in 2015-2016 show
unprecedented levels of sexual harassment and other kinds of harassment
in the workplace in the Garment and Textile industries in Bengaluru-the
hub of Garment industry in the South of India. According to this study,
14% of women garment workers in Bengaluru have been raped or forced to
commit a sexual act; 75% of garment workers report that there is no
functioning complaints procedure in their factory for investigating and
punishing cases of sexual harassment or violence; 80% of women garment
workers report their health and safety is at risk because of working
conditions; 43% of women workers were not given maternity leave; 65% do
not believe women garment workers can access justice because they are
too poor.
The
stories of Divya and Kavitha Rani (names changed to protect from
victimisation) working in Shahi Exports Maddur show it is no different
in Maddur.
Divya
also noted that though the women have been complained about in the
past, nothing has been done about it. “There are complaint boxes placed
in every floor, and many of us have written complaints after complaints,
but the head office is not bothered at all.”
Kavitha
Rani is working in the embroidery department for last five years. She
was also one of the workers who had been protesting last week. Kavitha
is a thirty-eight-years-old widow living with her children, mother and
her elder brother’s family. She travels every day in the morning on a
bus, or auto or some tempo to the factory. She had to quit her job, as
she was unable to bear the production torture that she was subjected to.
After her friends insisted that she should again start working in the
factory, she joined as a helper in the embroidery department and now she
is working as an operator in the department. Kavitha said that the
production torture in the factory is unbearable and verbal abuse --
hurling sexual language at the workers is a routine.
Kavitha said,
“Workers
in our department are also abused every day. If we ask for something,
as basic as warm water to drink in the canteen, we are abused. They keep
asking us to quit the job in the factory and buy some cattle and work
as an agricultural labourer. We at the embroidery department do not keep
quiet -- we ask them to give us loans for buying cattle. They know we
are not the kinds who would bear everything and anything. The conditions
in other departments are worst. Production torture is too much. Workers
do not even take lunch breaks. If we ask them why they have not taken a
break, they usually ask us to shut up, by saying they haven’t met
production targets. All the workers come from a similar background. It
is very common to hear workers lamenting about the conditions that are
forcing them to work in the factory. ‘If our husbands were on the right
path, why would we have to see these days?’ Some ask.”
The committee to study “long-pending issues” of the garment workers
The Chief Minister of Karnataka, H D Kumaraswamy has directed the
formation of a committee involving labour department officials, textile
manufacturers, central trade unions, and garment workers. The committee
is said to study the “long-pending issues” of the garment workers
including the minimum wage. The Garment and Textile industry workers in Karnataka are protesting for a revision in the minimum wage.
There have been many reports and studies that have indicated existing violence and harassment in the workplace in the Garment Industry. India’s garment industry operates in
the informal sector and remains poorly regulated, resulting in a lack
of legally binding employer relationships, limited or no legal
protection for workers, a lack of trade union protection and collective
bargaining, denial of employment-related benefits and very few
functioning grievance mechanisms. This has left the workers to face a
vicious nexus of management, police and politicians. As Divya and
Kavitha Rani observed, often the workers who complain are targeted.
Jayaram noted that the company never fire the workers, but they keep
transferring from one department to the other.
These
frequent transfers do not let the workers get accustomed to the
department that they are newly posted to. Thus they mostly are unable to
fulfil their production targets and this gives the management an excuse
to harass them.
One
has to wait and see if the committee formed by the CM would take into
consideration the narratives of the workers in the Garment and Textile
industry. Jayaram and Divya noted that the functioning sexual harassment
cell should be set up with the union members in the cell.
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