2020-08-25 : Workers@iitk Amidst the COVID Lockdown (Hamara Manch Update IV): CCD Workers and Hostel Canteen Workers

Workers@iitk Amidst the COVID Lockdown

Hamara Manch Update 4: August 25, 2020

It is now five months since the disruptions due to lockdowns and related closure of various activities in the campus. In all these months there has been little conversation on the workers and the consequences of lockdown on their lives. As students, regular staff, faculty and administration have been busy coping with contingencies in their own respective domain, we have almost forgotten about those who make the campus habitable every day for us. Many of those workers have continued to serve us amidst the pandemic. Hamara Manch has been trying to keep in touch with various kinds of workers amidst all the disruptions in their lives and has been attempting to put together their stories and updates in these uncertain times. While the first two updates reported on mess workers, the third focused on canteen workers (all reports are available here: https://sites.google.com/site/iitkcfdevelopment/).

 This fourth update extends the scope of the previous one on workers in canteens in the academic area. This report has two parts – the first dealing with CCD (Café Coffee Day) workers, and the second with hostel canteens. While the former is part of an international franchise the latter are usually operated by small local contractors, though the workers in all cases are equally exploited – overworked (well over the legally mandated 8 hours with no overtime pay) and underpaid (wages are less than half of the mandated minimum wages). And with wages drying up with lockdown closure, all these workers are struggling to make ends meet, with no help or end to their troubles in sight.

Café Coffee Day (CCD) Workers

A lot of us have spent many happy hours enjoying coffee and conversation, or even a cosy corner to work by ourselves at CCD. We have all appreciated the service with a smile that we receive from the staff there, and some frequent visitors to CCD have also got to know some of these staff members at an individual level. The academic area CCD has now been closed for nearly five months, with no chances of it opening up in the near future. How have those workers been coping? Drawing on information from one worker who has been working in our CCD since 2017, this report looks at both the working conditions when it was open, and the impact of its lockdown-related closure on these workers.

Working Conditions before Lockdown:  CCD employed 12 workers – five women and seven men, including one manager and one cleaning staff. Work was done in two shifts – from 7am to 4pm, and from 4pm to 12/1am, with only male workers for the evening/night shift. The first shift, which employed all the women and few men, often extended up to 8pm due to excess work with no overtime payment for these extra hours. Apart from the manager and the cleaner, the other 10 workers were expected to do all kinds of work – from operating the cash register to making coffee / heating up the food, to serving. Apart from the coffee that was freshly made on location, all the food was sent to this CCD from the main branch in Civil Lines, with workers here having no control over its time of arrival or its quality. Several times in a week truckload of food and beverage items are delivered which the workers need to unload and carry to the storeroom inside CCD.

Wages:  The campus CCD is one of the highest earning branches of CCD in Kanpur. In 2017, when this worker began work at CCD, the promised wages were Rs. 6,000 per month, but what was given varied between Rs. 3,500-4,000 per month. The company provided for a Rs. 500 increment per year depending on passing a test. Through the intervention of students, there was some improvement in the wages, with workers receiving Rs. 8,000-8,400 (with Rs. 12-13,000 for the manager) before the lockdown in March 2020. These wages included four off days that could be taken at anytime within a 30-day period by each worker.

Post-Lockdown Situation:  March 21, 2020 was the last day that CCD opened. All the workers have received their salary for the days worked in the month of March, and have also been given 25% of their salary for April. Then, starting May 23, the women workers were called to the Arya Nagar branch for work, while some men were employed at the Civil Lines branch. The workers were employed there till July, but have not been called for work since then. For this entire period (May 23 to beginning July), these workers were paid Rs. 5,000 each. The company has now asked these workers to accept a six-month leave period during which they have been promised 25% of their salary. However, till the time of our conversation with this worker, no wages had been paid after the Rs. 5,000 paid in early July for the work done over May-June.

            Most of the CCD workers have not found any alternate employment. It appears that most of them do have other household members with some source of income, though this is not the case with the one worker who talked to us whose family is struggling to make ends meet without any regular wages coming in. None of these workers have received any financial aid of any kind from the Institute.

Hostel Canteen Workers

Canteens are an integral aspect of hostel life on campus, with most students and many other campus residents, regularly enjoying the services they offer. While we relish the wide and tasty food choices they offer at very reasonable prices, not to mention the wonderful ‘account’ facility these canteens provide, allowing us to enjoy their fare without immediate payment, we usually remain oblivious to the cost paid by the workers for these benefits. The following report is based on our conversation with about ten workers from four different hostel canteens.

Working Conditions before Lockdown:  The canteens of all fourteen hostels on campus combine to employ about 150 workers. Many of these workers have worked in these canteens for up to ten years, shifting from one to the other when faced with arbitrary firings. The working hours in the canteens are from 1pm to 3am (close to double of the legally mandated 8 hours, with no overtime payment). The workers are paid between Rs. 8000-10,000 per month. The salaries are usually paid by the 10th of the month, and canteen owners also provide advances for expenses during the month when requested by the workers. Problems with payment arise often when customers do not clear their accounts on time, leading to a cash-flow problem for these small canteen owners.

Post-Lockdown Situation: All hostel canteens got shut down in March when the hostels were closed down. Since then, most of the canteen workers have received either full or part payment for the days worked in March. In addition, the Institute provided a one-time financial aid of Rs. 7,000 per head to the hostel canteen workers in June (in a few cases, this aid reached the workers only in mid-August due to some problems with data collection for payment purposes). However, since April, none of these workers have had any regular source of income. A few have occasionally found some construction work as helpers, but most have found no alternative employment of any kind. Most of these workers are relatively young, in their twenties, which means that several of them must have started working in the canteens when in their teens. As one of the workers pointed out, dire family situation necessitates such early entry into the workforce. Most of them are the sole or primary source of income for the entire family, and with no regular wages coming in since May, these workers and their families are surviving on the very basic PDS rations provided by the government.

The Problem of ‘Dues’: Many of these workers have approached their contractors for financial aid during this period. Most of these canteen contractors are also small-time local operators, who are themselves facing financial strain as a result of the closure of hostel canteens. The problem is compounded by the fact that many of these canteen owners have themselves not received their dues from the hostels/students. At the beginning of the lockdown in March our estimates suggest that such dues ranged from Rs. 40,000 to 8 lakhs with lower dues in the PG halls and the dues up to a few lakhs for the UG halls and in one special case in a large UG hall the unpaid dues towards the canteen operator were close to Rs. 18 lakhs. Some of these dues have been cleared in recent weeks as students have been taking no dues clearance, but in some halls though the students have paid the canteen dues to the halls, the money has yet to reach the canteen operators. As a result, these canteen owners have themselves been unable to pay anything to the workers or clear their dues to various suppliers, creating further financial stress for these local vendors.

Conclusion

Be it canteens in the academic area or in the hostels, each of us, at one time or another, has benefitted from the services they provide. These canteen workers have provided us with that much needed sustenance at odd hours that makes it possible for us to continue with our work. Yet, these providers of such an essential service to our campus community are today struggling for their own and their family’s basic sustenance. What is also very troubling is complete failure of the institute authorities to enforce any labour rights, be it work hours, minimum wage, or ESI-PF benefits, in contrast to the mess workers even in normal times. Do we not have any responsibility towards these fellow members of our campus community? 

Attachment: HM Update 4.pdf