2010-03-17 : Hamara Manch Update [Labour Commissioner Visit, Environmental Building Case]

Hamara Manch Update: 17^th March 2010

Dear Friends,

There has been an interesting development which we wanted to share with you on behalf of Hamara Manch. The Regional Labour Commissioner (central) Kanpur has hauled up the Institute for serious violations of contract labour laws. But let us start at the very beginning.

This emerged out of the efforts of our worker friends of Environment building. As many would remember this is the same set of workers who dared to speak up against their contractor on the issue of non-payment of minimum wages back in 2007. They were able to force the Institute to form a committee to look into the issue of ‘back wages’ (Oct 2007) which after five months of deliberation gave a report upholding their complaint (March 2008). The workers were given some money as back wages, but as was expected all of them lost their jobs immediately. Hamara Manch emerged (April 2008) due to the initial enthusiasm of these set of workers who committed to keep coming for meetings in spite of loosing their jobs. Many of them have continued, and every Wednesday some of them cycle for 25 – 30 kms (one way) just to attend these meetings.

Several initiatives came up around these workers including the RTI where the Central Information Commission hauled up the Institute in an unprecedented judgment (August 2009). Incidentally the aforementioned contractor was awarded over Rs 25 crores worth of new contracts. We at Hamara Manch decided that the then Minimum Wages Chairperson should be asked to explain this anomaly – as the workers put it “We who complained against the malpractice lost our job, while the culprit was rewarded with such large contracts. What kind of justice is this”? As has been our practice of not interfacing with any official on behalf of workers and let the workers meet the officials directly, the environment building workers regularly started meeting the Chairperson MWMC on this. After several meetings the MWM chair invited the workers for a meeting with the Registrar who he said was the competent authority to address this issue. When the workers reached the venue at the appointed time they found themselves surrounded by the security guards. The registrar came up to them and told the security force to not allow any of them to ever enter the Institute premises. And then he turned around and told our worker friends (he actually held one of them around the shoulder) condescendingly: “If you do not like what the Institute has done then you must go to the labour court, any further discussion can happen only there”.

The worker friends decided to take this ‘well intentioned’ advice seriously and filed a complaint in the labour office, where the case is under consideration. But simultaneously they also filed a case on the rampant flouting of labour laws in the campus. As a follow up to the latter the Regional Labour Commissioner sent two officials to enquire on the report. Though the contractors and perhaps the administration maintains cordial relations with the RLC office, the violations are so blatant that they were forced to file a report with fairly damning evidence in support of the complaint filed by the workers (a summary of the report is attached).

The first hearing was on the 12^th of March and the Institute was represented by 4 officials including the Asst. Registrar (Legal). But the Institute was grossly ill prepared. In response to the charges they could only come up with the following lame justifications:

How can anyone who is not an employee or a member of the community and is not in anyway related to the Institute file any complaint against the Institute?
Ours is a World Class Institute hence these charges cannot be true. Things are in complete order and systems are in place and we have a Minimum Wages Monitoring Committee headed by a senior faculty and MWs are monitored by students and faculty.
And finally even if they were true things are much worse in other government institutions like IIPR (Indian Institute of Pulses Research) and NSI (National Sugar Institute).

· On the first point, the Labour Commissioner apparently dismissed this point by the Institute completely asking the lawyer not to even address this irrelevant issue and instead to concentrate on the case.

· On the second the Regional Labour Commissioner himself challenged their claims by stating that one case against the Institute is under consideration in his office (env. building cases) and apparently the RLC’s office has filed 13 cases against the Institute with the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate on the basis of their investigations. The lawyer mentioned that the MWMC was not an initiative of the administration but they were forced to concede due to the concerted efforts of concerned citizens. Further that it ran due to the efforts of the volunteers virtually with no support of the Institute administration. He also mentioned that the prevalent working conditions for contract workers are documented in the website of the second chairperson. This point was noted by the Regional Labour Commissioner. At some point the lawyer even mentioned the petition with 500 signatures which created quite an impression on both the Labour Commissioner as well as the Institute’s representatives. Finally when the Institute’s group kept insisting that there were no irregularities the RLC asked each of them to sign an affidavit individually to this effect. He actually dictated the declaration.

· The third claim was obviously ridiculous – how can irregularities elsewhere justify irregularities in the Institute?

The next hearing is on the 6^th of April, 2010.

Hamara Manch

p.s. Attached the main findings of the Investigation Committee

Attachment: labcommissireport.pdf