The Case of Hall VIII Mess Workers

• 18th-Dec-2012, Malaise of Arbirary firing and baithki at IITK campus
  ( A letter from Citizens' Forum to Director, IITK regarding the abusive use of arbitrary firing and forced temporary suspensions. )

• Nov 2012. Report circulated by Hamara Manch is appended below. More details are available in this pdf attachment.

Dear Friends,

Here is another Hamara Manch update for you, this time on the situation of workers in hostel messes. Even as we are all celebrating the festival season, several workers have been fired as messes go through contract changes. Many of these workers, who have worked in IIT for up to 10 years, are non-local with no local support system to fall back upon. So in this festive season, they are suddenly left destitute, with no financial resources even for daily survival. In this bleak situation, a ray of hope has been provided by a group of students who have decided to show their solidarity with these workers by inviting them as guests for meals in their hostel messes. While this fulfills a practical need (these workers literally have no place to eat), it is also a way of expressing a sense of fellowship with these workers who have served the same students in the same messes for many years. We invite you to join in this show of solidarity by joining these workers at meal times in these messes.

A short version of the Hamara Manch report on this issues is appended below. A longer version is attached as a PDF file.

Double Jeopardy:  The Case of Hall VIII Mess Workers

Though messing is essential and perennial work, the institute has, over the past decade, privatised most of the hostel messes and given them on contract to several different contractors.  The contract is usually given for 2-3 years, with contractors for specific messes frequently being changed every time a contract ends.  The victims of these contract changes are ONLY the mess workers whose jobs are put into jeopardy every time a contract change occurs since the incoming ‘new’ contractor is given the ‘right’ to fire any and all existing workers with impunity without even the semblance of any due process. It is the fate of three such workers (who have been in contact with Hamara Manch), and what it shows about the systemic exploitation of mess workers in our ‘world-class’ institute, that is the subject of this report.

Three Workers, Two Contractors, and a ‘World-Class’ Institute:

On Oct. 1, 2012, the contractor providing messing services in Hall VIII changed from M/s Bedi and Bedi to M/s Kanaka.  The new contractor fired five workers (out of more than 40 total workers), though one was re-hired within a few days.

The fired workers attempted to plead their case with hostel wardens and students.  While the warden-in-charge stated that this was not his concern and the decision was up to the students, the mess warden and HEC student members put the onus of responsibility on the contractor saying that he had a perfect right to hire or fire anyone he liked.  However, when the workers approached the management of the new contractor, they were told that they had been removed at the behest of some students. 

Meanwhile, M/s Bedi and Bedi has neither paid all the due wages of the fired workers, nor has it provided them with the necessary documents to avail of their EPF.

The workers, therefore, have not just lost their livelihood, but are literally left with no money even for daily survival.  One of them is a 48 year old father of two college-going sons who has worked in IITK messes since 2002; another is a 27 year old father of two young children who has worked in Hall VIII itself since 2004 where he had risen to the position of head cook before being fired; the third is a 21 year old orphan who came to work in IITK (Hall VIII mess) in 2006 when he was just a teenager.

Double Jeopardy:  Repeated Punishment for the Same Unproven ‘Offense’

While officially no reasons are being given for firing these workers from the Hall VIII mess, it has been made clear to them that they are being targeted for ‘complaints’ registered against them during their tenure under M/s Bedi and Bedi.  The history of these complaints is as follows:

1)      In February 2012, one of the supervisors filed a written complaint against one of the workers alleging misbehavior at work.  The complaint was ‘investigated’ by the Mess Secretary which, though not recorded in any official report, resulted in two workers getting 20 days baithiki (compulsory leave without pay) each.  One of these workers, however, was allowed back to work within a couple of days, while the other one (the senior 48 year old worker who has now been fired) came back to work only after suffering through the full 20 days baithiki.

2)      In May 2012, one of the supervisors registered a complaint against the 21 year old worker accusing him of starting a fight when he was asked to go on leave during the summer months.  Security guards were brought into the issue by this supervisor and eventually he was given 40  days baithiki as punishment.  The matter, however, did not end there. When he, and his senior co-worker (the one mentioned above) who had also been given 40 days off, returned after this enforced leave, they were not allowed to re-join work.  Effectively they had been ‘fired’ for their ‘offenses’.

The matter was then investigated by the then mess warden (who has spoken extensively to Hamara Manch representatives about the mess situation), who insisted that both workers be taken back to work forthwith.  The workers re-joined work, only to be fired by the new contractor a little over two months later, with the same complaints being cited unofficially as the reason for their dismissal. The workers, thus, are being punished repeatedly for the same ‘offense’ (which is illegal in itself), even though the ‘offense’ itself has never been proven through any investigation.

The Art of Cooking Without Raw Materials

The third worker has no written complaint against him on record.  He appears to have been fired purely in response to student complaints about the deteriorating quality of mess food over the past year.  This worker has been the head cook in Hall VIII since 2007, but the complaints against the food have begun only in 2011.  This may be explained by the 2011 mess secretary’s decision to lower the BDMR (Basic Daily Meal Rate) for the students.  Pressure from the hall student population made the contractor agree to this lower rate.  The result was obvious – the raw material being provided to the cooks was cut drastically in terms of both quantity and quality, while the amount of food to be cooked remained the same.  The head cook was thus asked to perform the miraculous task of producing pre-2011 quality food with much less materials than he had used to produce the same dishes earlier.  And it is his failure to perform this miracle that has resulted in his being fired as an ‘unsatisfactory’ cook.

Interestingly, no one in the institute (neither students nor administration) seems to hold the contractor and/or its management responsible in any way for the ‘quality’ of food that is served to the students.  This is evident by the fact that M/s Bedi and Bedi now has the contract for Hall VII mess, while all the managers / supervisors they employed earlier in Hall VIII either continue to work there or have been accommodated in other hostels (two have gone to Hall VII, while one is now in Hall V).

What Do We Learn from the Above?:

The conditions outlined above are not specific to Hall VIII. Currently, most hostels are going through mess contract re-shuffles, and in the process workers are being fired from each one, while others are being hired / re-hired in ever more exploitative conditions.  Keeping this in mind, we can conclude that:

1.      Contractors and Institute personnel (officials such as wardens, COW chair etc., HEC student members) are equally responsible for creating exploitative work conditions for mess workers.*

2.      Contractors and Institute personnel are complicit in decisions regarding the firing of specific workers.  It is this very complicity that allows both to continually point fingers at the other as the one responsible for the firing, and thus separately wash their hands off all responsibility.

3.      Contractors appear to have the same authority as Institute officials especially with regard to demanding the intervention of security personnel who respond directly to their requests without any official institute authorisation.

4.      Change in a mess contract does not prevent the old contractor from getting a contract in another hostel, nor does it make any change in the management personnel of a specific mess.  The only purpose of changing contractors therefore appears to be either firing workers, or making them work under ever more exploitative conditions.

5.      There is no due process to ensure the working of natural justice when it comes to contract workers.  Any ‘complaint’ against a worker is automatically treated as a ‘proven offense’ and acted upon with arbitrary punishments, with no statute of limitations on how many times the same worker may be punished for the same alleged offense.

6.      At the same time, no complaint seems to be officially registered against any contractor, and no contractor has been penalised in any way even when legal violations have been blatantly proven.

7.      Contract workers are seen to have no rights, not even with respect to what is due to them in terms of wages and EPF.

What We Demand:

1.      Immediate settlement of all dues of the fired workers, including wages and EPF.

2.      Immediate re-instatement of arbitrarily fired workers.

3.      Formulation of a transparent due process, with provision for workers’ participation, for consideration of all complaints against contract workers.

4.      Formulation of a list wherein ‘offenses’ are matched with a justifiable quantum of ‘punishment’. This list should be made public and be available to all workers.

5.      Assurance of continued employment of workers without harassment while any complaint against them is under investigation.

*Note:  It is important to note that the ex-mess warden of Hall VIII (whose term ended in October 2012) is an exception to this general trend. As is obvious at various points in this report, this ex-warden made several attempts to ensure that workers’ basic rights were respected. Significantly while this mess warden was immediately replaced when his term expired, the other two wardens, (whose terms also expired at around the same time) were asked to continue.

Hamara Manch

November  2012

Attachment: Double Jeopardy: The case of Hall VIII mess workers