An appeal to alumni to write letters and sign a petition to stop the planned mass layoff at Visitors Hostel (VH)

From: Citizens Forum at IITK <citizensforumatiitk@gmail.com>

Date: 24 August 2017 at 14:27

Subject: An appeal to alumni to write letters and sign a petition to stop the planned mass layoff at Visitors Hostel (VH)

Dear fellow alumni/alumnae,

Greetings! We hope that you are doing well. Unfortunately, some of our fellow human beings from the IITK campus community are not doing as well. The jobs of 72 contract workers at the Visitors’ Hostel (VH) are under immediate threat. We believe that our efforts can save these jobs. This letter is to share with you about this unfolding story and appeal to your solidarity and shared humanity.

You may have heard that our alma-mater has recently awarded the contract for management of VH to a new contractor. Under the previous contract, 74 workers were serving the Institute to the best of their skills and capabilities. In our experience, everyone who visited the campus has said nice things about their hospitality, management, personnel, food and cleanliness. A sample of these reviews can be read on the following link: https://tinyurl.com/y9yg3j5q

Now, 72 out of these 74 workers are about to be laid off by the new contractor who will be terminating their service on 31st August. Of these, at least 60 workers have been working at VH before or since 2010. There are a few who have even been working here since the 90s! Now imagine the plight of losing livelihoods after serving the Institute for more than 20 years. And this is happening despite their flawless services to the Institute. The future of a lot of families seems bleak right now!

How did the new contractor terminate the contract of these workers? They were interviewed and essentially only one question was asked: how much are they getting paid? The workers replied that they were getting the existing minimum wages. We do not need to be reminded that this wage is meant to be barely sufficient for survival. This reply was enough for the new management to fire them all except two, as you all know that no contractor wants to pay minimum wages to the contract workers on the campus. We should not forget that the payment of minimum wages has been made possible only after the long struggle by workers, campus community and alumni groups, and which you have also supported from time to time.

We believe that this mass layoff will undo the progressive changes we have observed on the campus. We already know that some workers have to pay bribes in the order of Rs 50,000/- to get the coveted jobs in the campus, since by and large contractors have been offering the legally due minimum wages for the last few years. Is the mass layoff a tactic to take these bribes from a new set of workers?

We would like you to register your powerful voice of dissent against the terms of this new contract. The VH workers are a part of the bigger IITK community. An injury to one is an injury to all.

We are not alone in this. This week more than 600 workers and around 60 students and faculty members have met in public to discuss, understand and manifest for the future of their fellow workers and of their own. Their struggle is bound to escalate further. We hope that you will also join with this ongoing demand of retaining all the existing VH workers.

We request you to write a simple letter to the IITK director in this context. We are providing a sample below which you may change or adapt as you like. We also invite you to sign the letter which we have sent to the Director, IIT Kanpur: https://www.ipetitions.com/petition/stop-the-planned-layoff-of-iit-kanpur-visitors

As before, Citizens’ Forum will maintain updates on its website:https://iitkcf.appspot.com/dsogIR.

Let us all say no to this attack on dedicated workers!

Sincerely,

Alumni, Citizens Forum

Sample letter to the Director, IIT Kanpur

Dear Prof Manna,

director@iitk.ac.in

We have recently heard about the mass layoff of Visitors Hostel workers under a new contractor. These workers have been doing an excellent job. We call upon the Institute to kindly retain them all either by changing the contract or by nullifying the contract altogether.

Regards,

XYZ

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Alumni associated with Citizens' Forum, IIT Kanpur.

https://sites.google.com/site/iitkcfdevelopment/