4/11/2013
Everyday out in the field, I meet so many individuals in buses, in the factory, in their homes, in the villages dotted around the area, these encounters reveal a tiny part of their lives. Not sure if it is right to call it life stories..because what they reveal is now, the present, which is experienced everyday in the context of work, at homes, during travels.
My research is with young women factory workers. I do of course talk to the young men, they are very much part of the lives of these young women in many ways.
What strikes me is the contrast in the lives of these women. How different factors such as nature of work, employment, education, skills, places of residence etc seem to define who they are. While all of them identify themselves as working women, their degree of independence, personal and professional choices seem to vary according to all these variables.
There are different sets of young women that I encounter at the shopfloor: Tamil women from different districts of Tamil Nadu; inter-state migrant women from Orissa, Assam; some live in rented house which they pay for themselves, some live in rented places that their employers pay for, some live with their parents; some are in 'permanent' employment, some in contract with outsourced service delivery company, some 'temps'...all these factors are intersecting to create specific everyday practices of these women.
While the site of work, that is the factory remains the same, what differs is their location/place in the production cycle, nature and condition of work, space of residence etc--how does all these variables intersect and define a young woman's world of work and their identity as a worker?
10/11/2013
Restrooms!
When I read this report, I was thinking of the restrooms in the shopfloor that I visit, and how restrooms are more than just loos! Restrooms are probably the only places in a workspace where workers can for a moment rest, chat, take a break from their tedious monotonous work without being 'watched'. Well maybe not completely unwatched but atleast there are (who knows for how long this privacy will exist?) no CCTV cameras inside the restrooms. CCTVs are everywhere including close to the entrance to the restrooms. But if not cameras, there are human eyes that watch them when they visit the restrooms. Restrooms are interesting spaces---spaces of subversion, conversations and rest!
10/11/2013
Shopfloor love and caste realities!
11/11/2013
Promises Delivered!
Went to a small village called Chennakuppam near Oragadam Koot road (Sriperumbadur Taluk) yesterday with a student of journalism. Some of us have been visiting Oragadam to talk to the migrant workers who have flocked in 1000s in the villages dotting this area in search of work in the automobile industries that have been set up in this place. A quick internet search will tell you that this is 'Detroit of India', 22 Fortune 500 companies have invested here, investments worth $3billion has been made in Oragadam-Sriperumbadur area. One internet site even described the place as 'The catalyst of India's growth'.
We were curious to know what this catalyst of growth meant for people living there, not the migrant workers alone, but people who have lived here for generations. Are they also part of the 'growth vandi (car)' or they have been left on the way side? I keep coming back to this village, I have much longer connection with it. This village once saw a spirited fight by a handful of dalit families to save their tiny pieces of land from a multinational auto giant-Renault Nissan Alliance. But they didn't succeed. How could they? 13 poorest of the dalit families against an 'auto alliance' of two giant companies that together sell more than one in cars worldwide (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault-Nissan_Alliance) and a state government that wants to make 'Detroit of India' a reality? No match really.
We went to homes of some of these dalit families who were part of the Bhoodan (land) struggle. The villages in Tamil Nadu are clearly demarcated. The Hindu upper caste habitations on one side and the 'colony' where the dalits live on the other. We went to the colony where the 'adi dravidas' (the literal translation would be the original inhabitants of the Dravida land) live.
An interesting thing that we noticed as we walked in the 'colony' were the newly constructed brightly painted houses on the street. While the homes we went to were still small mud and straw huts, many of the neighbouring houses were cemented house with gates. It was an interesting contrast. Although we could not speak with the seemingly 'prosperous' people, their neighbours told us that they sold their agricultural land to the companies and made money.
There are two sets of people living in this village. One is the burgeoning population of migrant workers, over a thousand of them living in 10s and 20s in small rooms or shacks (see http://tnlabour.in/?p=1913)and the local families. Both sets of people work in the factories in the surrounding area.
Swaminthan anna and his wife Nirmala, both leaders of the Bhoodan struggle once, have now started working in the factories. In her piece of land where she toiled once to grow millets and other farm produce, now stands the gleaming Renault Nissan factory, where she now works as a housekeeping staff. The only difference is, as she says "there is no dignity in this work. When the land was ours, we toiled hard, grew our own food, it was ours. Now I work for the company, clean dirt, carry waste, work 3 shifts, even night shifts, my life has become hard". With a family to support, including a handicapped son and his family, both aging Swaminthan and Nirmala now work in the factories as housekeeping staff or security gaurd, bringing in maybe Rs 8000-10,000 per month between them. "But look at the cost of food. We used to grow rice, millets (raagi), now we buy all this in market for Rs 40-50 a kilo. Whatever we earn goes into buying food for the family".
Story of Saraswathi amma and her daily wager husband is the same. One works as a house keeping staff in an electronics factory, and the other travels to distant places to look for work. Many women from the village have found jobs with house keeping contractors in the big factories, while men work as daily wagers or as security guards. "They don't give jobs to our sons and daughters in these factories, some of them have even done ITI trainings"--this is a common lament we heard at different houses. As per villagers, young men and women are not given jobs in the shop floor, the jobs they get, if they do, are mostly peripheral. "My son got a job inside the factory because he lied about his place of residence, he gave a different address. If he had said he is from this village, he wouldn't have been given a job inside" informed Swaminthan.
Why do companies do that? Is this politics of space since local people will be able to draw support and solidarity from their families and villages located close by, whereas workers who come from outside are not able to do so? Are these strategic management decisions or practices? After all the workers or operators who operate machines or do the shop floor work are also from rural villages with similar social or educational profile, they are trained on the job. So why transport workers from 50-60 kms away to the factories and not train and employ the ones who are staying close by?
Experiences of work seems to be very rooted in the particularity or specificity of a place. Who gets work, what kind of work they get, experiencing the work seems very specific to the context under which it is being done.
13/11/2013
Cycle of precarity!
I am meeting a young woman today who just lost her job. After working in a global firm for two years, even though as an 'external labour' with a knowledge of being a 'temp', when the 'break' actually happened the feeling is quite different. Over the phone she said "i have been given a break, no job"...a sensed anxiety and helplessness in her voice. Like her, two other girls who were working in the factory got a 'break' last thursday as they went to work.An atmosphere of uncertainty exists in the workplace where these young women worked as the firm undergoes a massive restructuring with an impending global merger. No one knows whose job is going to be axed next. Just a few weeks ago, when I met these women on the assembly line, they nervously told me 'from January we will have no job'. But January is still two months away, the girls lost their jobs all of a sudden when they came to work on day.
As they worked 8 hours shifts everyday standing next to the permanent workers, they had perhaps forgotten for a moment how dispensable they were, the 'temps', the flexi-labour that companies hire and fire to 'ramp up' and 'ramp down' as their production volumes fluctuates! Treated like those inanimate products that these companies make, forgetting that these are people--flesh and blood.
This morning I was reading Ranabir Samaddar's 'Primitive accumulation and some aspects of work and life in India' (EPW, May 2009), where Samaddar talks at length about who are the workers in India today? He talks of the 'nesting of the informal within the formal' where 38% of the 40% informal non agriculture labour is actually employed in the formal sector. In India, informal workforce constitutes over 90% of the total workforce, in which about 60% is in the farm work and rest in non-farm work. The bulk of the non-farm informal employment is in the formal sector.
14/11/2013
I could not meet her, the contract worker, she had gone out looking for work. She called me to say she has landed a job on contract with a neighbouring factory. She sounded relieved. I was left thinking about the cycle of precarity that she is forced to enter due to the way production is arranged around contractual system, specially in these global production networks employing young workers.
Many of the contract workers of the factory have been laid off recently. Laying off contract workers is not unusual for companies. The rationale behind 'contract system' hire and fire when you need them! Contractual system in production has been one of the main causes for the increasing precarity amongst the workers....its a constant state of insecurity which affects the personal lives of the workers and their families. Much has been written about it.
I am finding it very difficult to meet any of the contract workers who have been laid off recently from the factory I have been researching. Most of them have returned home either to visit families, tend to their sick relatives, or just because paying room rents without a job is not easy.
24/11/2013
The sense of insecurity is not just amongst the 'temps' but also amongst the so-called 'secured' workers. I think to understand the state of insecurity amongst workers, one needs to understand the way global production systems work, how global capital and finances operate. Take for instance the case of Nokia mobile phones factory near Chennai. Jobs of thousands of workers seems shaky with the company caught in a tax shenanigan with the government even as it plans to sell out to Microsoft.
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/industry-and-economy/info-tech/nokia-employees-mull-legal-options-to-unfreeze-chennai-assets/article5380287.ece
3/12/2013
'Modern Times'
You may laugh while watching Charlie Chaplin's antics as a worker in an assembly line---his hands moving mechanically screwing the bolts while walking around day dreaming or his startled face as he sneaks a little break trying to rest his back and smoke a cigarette in the restroom with the manager's sudden image flashing on the TV screen installed inside the toilet...fast forward this black and white 1930's classic movie set during the 'great depression' in America to the assembly lines of electronics factories near Chennai...and its no movie anymore set 70 years back, its a reality workers face daily on the shop floor even today. Chaplin's commentary on the indignity at workplace faced by the workers still holds true even today.
Recently, workers from Raptakos Brett and Company Limited, a pharmaceutical company challenged its management's decision to install CCTV cameras in restrooms to monitor the movements of workers as they took break during rest hours. The management took this regressive step to minimize any interruption to the production. (http://news.outlookindia.com/
Did Chaplin ever imagine that even 70 years after the creation of 'Modern Times', that his classic comment on an oppressive work place will become a norm in the world of 'modern work'?
5/12/2013
Migrant and alone
I wrote a few days back about how work might be experienced differently by different categories of workers. I have been familiar, to some extent, with the work-lives of migrant workers in Oragadam area, mostly men, who come to work from different parts of the country, especially Orissa, Bihar, Jharkhand, Bengal and work in the automobile or auto component supplier companies located in oragadam-sriperumbadur industrial area. But recently I have been, as part of my research, interacting with different categories of women workers from one work site, which includes permanent and non-permanent workers, and also migrant workers. This entry is about the young migrant women, who are both 'free' and 'unfree' at the same time. When I met these young migrant women in their 'rented' rooms (rented by their employers), my first impression was, how free they were. It was the day before Deepawali and I went to meet some of these girls. They work with a French multinational that has been contracted for canteen services in the factory that I have been researching. Most of the girls were out with their 'lovers'. Some of them, I was informed, had more than one lover (as they referred to their boy friends). Most of there girls are from rural Orissa and had a fairly conservative upbringing. The informal network of family, friends, agents brought them here, but interestingly, not everyone come out to work due of distress or 'push factor'. There seems to be different reasons why these young women came here to work, some due to economic reasons, but some due to a sense of failure of incapable of doing anything at home (heard from several girls--'my family is not dependent on my income as such, we have farm, home or a petty shop, but i did not pass school exam, i did not know what to do, a friend said come and work here, so i came). But interestingly, none of them have told at their homes what work they do here. They feel a sense of shame in telling their families the exact nature of their work (serving food in canteen). Its ironical that some of them moved out their homes out of sense of failure, but then the work that they do also doesn't seem to give them any sense of pride. During my course of conversation with them, I sense contradictions in how they perceive their work-life, its a complex mix of frustrated dreams, aspirations and hope.
They earn money and have certain autonomy in how they spend it or how much they remit back home(migrant men may have a totally different experience or how they spend the money dependent on why they had migrated), there is also a sense of freedom in their association with men, with quite a few women having more than one boy friend. I get a sense that these alliances are just not romantic associations, but there is more to it-- 'someone to take care of', both monetarily and emotionally. Some of the young women have boyfriends who are either supervisors or have other security in terms of jobs. There are exchanges of gifts-both cash and goods, which these men provide the women besides 'looking out for' at work in terms of what work is allotted or conditions of work one is subjected to.
The 'freedom' (economically and socially) that they experience comes with a certain cost given their terms and conditions of service. Their service conditions make them very vulnerable both economically and emotionally to the dictat of their employers, who hire or fire or shunt them around from one site to the other, breaking their rather fragile social fabric or community that keeps them going in a alien land. A young woman recently experienced extreme insecurity when she fell sick and complained of being denied even basic medical facility and was shunted out of the work site moved to a far away place. This has caused a huge emotional and mental distress to her (and one more of her colleagues).
3/2/2014
The Black Sheep in the flock!
This morning Abdul knocked at my door and said "madam, i can't come to clean your car anymore". I asked why. "Because my malik and malkin has said that they pay my salary, therefore I can't work elsewhere". But you do this work in your personal time, after your duty hours, how can they restrict you to do anything in your free time, I asked incredulously.
Abdul is a 22 years old boy from Assam's Silchar town in Cacchhar District. He works as a security guard with the Force 1 security company and stays in Urur Kuppam (a fishing hamlet abutting affluent neighbourhoods of Besant Nagar, Adyar) with 7 other young men from Assam. Urur Kuppam has a substantial population of migrant young men from Orissa and Assam who work as security gaurds in Force 1 or G4S security companies. The security guards are deployed by the companies in different residential and commercial properties where they work 12 hours a day and sometimes do double shift, either to make that extra money or are forced to by their employers (security companies) who juggle man-power in multiple sites. The security guards are not paid uniform wages. It changes as per the negotiation between their employers and 'units' (residential flats/homes or commercial establishments) they guard. So the same guard can earn either higher or lesser salary for the same job depending on what the companies has negotiated with the client.
Abdul had made a few mistakes. One morning, before his 12 hours 'duty' ended, he decided to clean my car. Malkin saw it. Another time, he decided to help me with collecting a few handful of sand in a plastic bag while on duty. Malkin saw that again. Malkin has also noticed how her driver (a polite middle aged Tamil man) and security guards chat and laugh with me, offer their help at times or play badminton with my child. What a crime! Its not done. How dare Abdul, whom malik pays Rs 6000 a month (Force 1 pays Abdul this amount as wages after deducting its share from what they must have negotiated with the owner of the house), gives a plastic chair to sit through the 12 hours night shift, a fan and a toilet to use, can even imagine doing other odd jobs or offer his help to others? Doesn't the malik and malkin own his labour, his body and soul, even when he is not on duty? Abdul has indeed committed a big mistake! He decided to think and act freely and displayed compassion to another human being!!
It all started yesterday with Malik noticing a metal lock missing from a rusting cycle that has been lying idle for last few years in the backyard of the house. He accused Abdul and the other security guard Niranjan, a polite young boy from Behrampur Orissa, of stealing the lock. "Why should we steal? a lock? it may not even be worth Rs 30?" said Abdul. After berating Abdul and Nirajan and accusing them of theft, the house owners scolded them for helping 'that woman next door'. "we pay you salary, why do you talk to her? who asked you to help her?" Abdul's supervisor was called, given a sound hearing and asked to discipline his security guards. So the net result was Abdul doesn't get to make that extra income that he was trying to earn during off duty. "Madam, its not about money, its about our dignity. We are not even considered human being by these people. They have lot of money, but no heart. They think they give us salary and that's all we deserve. They don't even speak to us nicely, never even offered a cup of tea. I get Rs 6000 per month here, in earlier unit I used to get Rs 7500 and the people were so nice, they would speak to us nicely, give us a cup of tea every morning. We are human beings too. Its not about money" emphasised Abdul. During our conversation, the driver from the next door also joined in and said he too was scolded for helping me. "You are a driver, we pay you, why do you have to help her?"
Abdul left. I stood around feeling angry, isolated and helpless at once. These are my friends, my only friends amidst this upper caste-middle class neighbourhood. I know my child is safe playing on the street under the watchful eyes of the drivers, watchmen, the ironkar pati (ironing woman and her family). But people like me or Abdul or the driver are the 'others' in this milieu. For us to live and earn our livelihoods in these socially gated communities, we have to follow the dikats of the rulers, sell our labour without questioning, or we can pack our bags and leave.
4/2/2014
I met her at the factory canteen. A pleasant young woman from Orissa, who like other migrant women have never told her family that she works cleaning dishes and serving food to factory workers who assemble phones. Her family thinks she does phone assembly. She and her 'boy friend' (from Bihar) recently got lured into a vicious 'prize' scam, where they were declared winner for entering a contest (sending correct name of actors for some movies) which was being advertised in some TV channel. They were informed by the prize organisers that they have won a SUV Van worth Rs 13 lakhs. The duo decided that they will take money instead of the SUV as they had no use of a car. The prize organisers agreed (there was no paper trail, only phone and sms communication) and said they have to deposit Rs 10,000 for claiming the prize money. An account number was sent and money was sent. But no prize money came. Subsequently, more demands were made and the duo ended up paying almost Rs 40,000 to scamsters, who kept promising to send the 'prize cheque'. The duo fell into a classic trap of making quick money to break the shackles of grind and poverty both at home and at work. Both of them are migrant workers with a french multinational company which contracts canteen service to other multinationals companies with factories around Chennai, make their workers work 12-16 hours a day, give them low wages anywhere between Rs 4000-6000, provide small rooms for accommodation where 16-20 workers fit in, sharing a room and a toilet. The lure of quick money can't be judged as 'pure greed' for these workers for whom daily life is such a grind, full of insecurity and indignity.
3/3/2014
Love in the time of metro
A small snippet in the Times of India caught my attention this morning. The heading said
'Love in the time of metro' (City Lights section):
"Working on a metro rail site is not only risky, but can often prove lonely. Far from..home, it is natural for hundreds of laborers to reminisce about their loved ones while building metro tunnels, elevated viaducts....And metro rail seems to have taken this into account and is trying to ensure that this sense of loniliness won't come in the way of safety. They have put up flex boards to instruct workers "concentrate on your work. Do not dream or think of personal problems while you work" reads one. The figure on a board displays a worker dreaming of a girl and painting a heart."
Reminds me a of a wonderful hindi film by Muzaffar Ali-'Gaman', means departure, starring Smita Patil and Farooq Shaikh. The song " Seene Mein Jalan, Aankhon Mein Toofaan" captures the sense of alienation, loneliness and fractured dreams of migrant workers.
Seene mein jalan, aankhon mein toofan sa kyu hain...why does the heart burn, why is there a storm in the eye....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Rz6JfgCJtk&noredirect=1
I see these men every day as I travel in the bus to the field. Scaling great heights in their yellow hard hats and very little else in terms of protective gear, they place heavy iron rods, pre-fabricated cement blocks, building block by block, steel by steel...Chennai's pride, every local politician's dream.. the Chennai metro rail! But what do they get in return. Low wages, unsafe work conditions, broken limbs, tin roofed shacks, hate, scorn and suspicion of local Tamil nationalist groups and easy targets for the police!
Recently, a young female employee of Tata Consultancy Service (TCS) went missing in Chennai's IT corridor. She was later found murdered near her work place. The police came under tremendous political pressure (a few months to go before the state goes to poll for the parliamentary elections) and quite predictably arrested two migrant workers from Bengal. The two worked at a constriction site near TCS as per media reports. The police claim that the murdered woman was sexually assaulted, robbed and then murdered by these men before her body was dumped in a bush near her office. No other detail is available. A team of women activists went as a fact finding team to investigate the incident, but all their attempts to inquire was stalled by the company and police. The police, meanwhile, has asked companies to install more CCTV cameras, surveillance systems and beef up the security in the corporate complexes dotted around the areas. The place in question is the sprawling peri urban area in the southern side of Chennai, also known as IT corridor, where many IT companies, back-end services, IT SEZs have set up their offices. These offices attract a large army of young 'educated' migrant workers (not that they identify themselves as one) from all over the country. It also attracts 'other' workers (young men, some with their families), who live in shanties or in the rented rooms in the semi-rural areas to build the fancy offices or work in the petty shops and eateries dotted all around. These are hybrid spaces, with vestiges of rural settings, fast turning into urban spaces with high rises, shiny buildings, fast cars, men and women smartly dressed zipping around with their smart phones...a place so contrast, a great paradox that this country is, so obscenely stark, and yet oblivious to most.
http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/tcs-employee-murder-uma-maheswari-chennai-west-bengal-migrants/1/345657.html
The Crime Branch Criminal Investigation Department (CBCID) sleuths of
the Tamil Nadu police arrested two Bengali migrant workers from Chennai
in connection with the murder of a 23-year-old woman software engineer.
Uma Maheswari, working with the IT major TCS at its Siruseri complex,
situated in the outskirts of Chennai had gone missing two weeks back.
She hails from Salem district of Tamil Nadu and her father complained to
the police two days after she went missing. There was no improvement in
the police investigations and at one stage the local Inspector told Uma
Maheswari's father that his girl could have eloped with some one and
asked him to wait for some time.
Dejected by the police's tardy investigations Uma Maheswari's relatives searched the area near the TCS complex and on February 22 her body was found just 200 metres away from her office with stab injuries. Sensing the seriousness of the crime K. Ramanujam, DGP himself visited the spot and ordered the CBCID enquiry. He also placed under suspension the local Inspector for showing a lethargic attitude in the case. On February 25, the CBCID claimed that it had cracked the case and announced the arrest of two Bengalis who were working as construction workers in nearby sites responsible for the murder.
"Ram Mandal and Uttam Mandal of Malda district of West Bengal were taken in to custody for the heinous crime. They are working in a tile manufacturing firm at the SIPCOT industrial complex near Chennai. Another team of our officers had already left for West Bengal to trace two other people who were also involved in this crime," said a senior CBCID official. Uma Maheswari was subjected to sexual assault too before her murder and her valuables including credit cards and cash were stolen from her the CBCID confirmed.
The incident has sparked some tension in the area with people demanding that migrant workers in Chennai should be sent back. Some fringe Tamil groups had already started talking against the migrants, but their voice is low as of now. Their voice gained some momentum when the Chennai police gunned down five migrant workers from Bihar in one of the most controversial encounter of sorts in February 2012. The police said that they were involved in a couple of bank robbery cases. The police also started blaming the migrants for the spurt in crime activities in the city and at one stage even attempted to launch racial profiling of migrants in Chennai. This move was stopped after human rights groups approached the Madras High Court.
But after a lull the latest incident has given ammunition to the fringe groups. "When we don't find adequate employment for our people, why should the government encourage these migrants? They are the root cause of all our problems, it is high time the government wake up and send them all back to their homes," K.Vimal, a local resident and a member of a fringe group, said.
Human Rights activists and intellectuals strongly condemn this attitude and blame the police for encouraging this talk. "You cannot blame the migrants for spurt in the crime activities. The statistics does not support this argument. Lakhs of migrants are working throughout Tamil Nadu. To ask them to go back to their homes is nothing but fascism. The migrants are subjected to untold exploitations and sufferings. More over the police does not allow feminists and human rights activists in this case to talk to the friends and relatives of Uma Maheshwari and it smacks of their attitude. It is high time the government wakes up and nip in the bud this nefarious tendency" says A.Marx, human rights activist in a telephonic conversation with the India Today.
6/4/2014
Lots have happened in these last few weeks since I posted anything on the blog. The most significant being Supreme Court dismissing Nokia's appeal against the Delhi High Court order directing Nokia to give a guarantee of Rs 35 billion over a tax dispute with Income Tax department before it can transfer it's Chennai plant (including the workers) to its new buyers Microsoft. (See:http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/03/14/nokia-india-court-idINDEEA2D08J20140314)
So what does this mean for the 5000 or more workers and staff of the Nokia factory? Nokia management seems unclear and non-transparent about it while hinting at down sizing the work force. This led the Nokia workers' union to protest (Hunger fast on 31st March 2014), to organise a press conference (27 March 2014), meet the officials at the labour and industries departments, demanding the government doesn't allow Nokia to close it's factory in Chennai.
READ AND HEAR VOICES OF THE WORKERS FROM THE PROTEST AT:
'Nokia Dis-connecting people
http://tnlabour.in/?p=2124
11/4/2014
FLIGHT OF CAPITAL
Last evening I got a call. "Management has suddenly announced VRS, said we don't need so many workers. They will have to go. All the trainee operators will have to take compulsory scheme, that is they have no choice but accept what is offered and leave. The permanent operators are offered voluntary scheme, but they will push us all out". The call was from the union advisor of Nokia India Thozhilalar Sangam at 8 pm. I was as shocked as they were. Started calling up my friends (workers). None of them knew of this. Infact one of them had just finished her shift at 7 pm and was on her way back home. "No, I don't know. What are you saying?" The notice was put on the shopfloor in the second shift.
I sat at my desk, my mind working in a funny way, thinking... The 'happy Nokia family'. How puzzled I was at this 'happiness' in the factory when I started my field work last year. Each day in the factory I would imagine myself in this little bubble of 'happiness', those glib talks of the managers of how content the workers were 'Nokia connecting people', all the 'good welfare schemes'...
So what happened to that happiness? where are those managers? Has Nokia now decided to 'dis-connect' from its 'family' now that the job is done and its business as usual? Its business as usual. Profit has been reaped, millions of phones have been manufactured, market has been established, deals have been made, so no need to cover the face with a mask anymore. It can be taken off and the ugly face revealed. Of profit and greed, of shifty capital. Pack up and go. Prey on workers, resources, governments in some other country...the flight of capital begins...leaving a trail of destruction behind.
Thinking of Supriya(name changed)...sitting in her little thatched hut in a distant back of beyond village in Arakkonam. A 24 years old widow. Married when she was barely 17 years old, still in school, to a drunkard who drank himself to death. As we sat talking to her, her 5 years old son plays around with his cousins, at times sitting on her lap. Her parents, both 'coolies' doing 100 days work or daily wagers sit around looking lost. Her sister with her two young daughters are also living in this small hut, she left her drunkard husband too. Supriya's meager salary of Rs 5500 as a trainee operator supports the family. She has 3 more months to become a permanent operator. That may not happen now.
"I don't want to hear anything about the company. They simply threw us out. I was let out in January. Just asked to leave", said an indignant Mahesh (name changed) who worked in Nokia as a contract worker for 1.5 years.
"We should not take VRS. We need the job. This is important to us", said Anitha.
So many voices.
I travel back a little. I think of that small room in Kancheepuram. Buying 'paal'(milk) packet, tea tul, a packet of time-pass biscuit and heading to Lakshmi's room. Abhinaya, Satya, Lakshmi, Pooja are waiting. Kalpana joins us. We are all set for a nice long afternoon chat(s)... drinking tea, talking of home, families, of work, of boy friends, of 'nokia couples'. I sit back and think of all those moments I have shared with them. Really happy moments.
Will they fight back? I ask myself. I don't know.
I had never imagined when I started my research that this would all turn out this way. So quickly. In less than a year everything changed so dramatically...there were writings on the wall, everyone sensed it, spoke of it cautiously, anxiously, but never imagined that it would come so soon, so suddenly.
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/features/smartbuy/voluntary-retirement-deal-offered-to-workers-at-nokias-chennai-plant/article5897193.ece
Voluntary retirement deal offered to workers at Nokia’s Chennai plant
Everyday out in the field, I meet so many individuals in buses, in the factory, in their homes, in the villages dotted around the area, these encounters reveal a tiny part of their lives. Not sure if it is right to call it life stories..because what they reveal is now, the present, which is experienced everyday in the context of work, at homes, during travels.
My research is with young women factory workers. I do of course talk to the young men, they are very much part of the lives of these young women in many ways.
What strikes me is the contrast in the lives of these women. How different factors such as nature of work, employment, education, skills, places of residence etc seem to define who they are. While all of them identify themselves as working women, their degree of independence, personal and professional choices seem to vary according to all these variables.
There are different sets of young women that I encounter at the shopfloor: Tamil women from different districts of Tamil Nadu; inter-state migrant women from Orissa, Assam; some live in rented house which they pay for themselves, some live in rented places that their employers pay for, some live with their parents; some are in 'permanent' employment, some in contract with outsourced service delivery company, some 'temps'...all these factors are intersecting to create specific everyday practices of these women.
While the site of work, that is the factory remains the same, what differs is their location/place in the production cycle, nature and condition of work, space of residence etc--how does all these variables intersect and define a young woman's world of work and their identity as a worker?
10/11/2013
Restrooms!
When I read this report, I was thinking of the restrooms in the shopfloor that I visit, and how restrooms are more than just loos! Restrooms are probably the only places in a workspace where workers can for a moment rest, chat, take a break from their tedious monotonous work without being 'watched'. Well maybe not completely unwatched but atleast there are (who knows for how long this privacy will exist?) no CCTV cameras inside the restrooms. CCTVs are everywhere including close to the entrance to the restrooms. But if not cameras, there are human eyes that watch them when they visit the restrooms. Restrooms are interesting spaces---spaces of subversion, conversations and rest!
http://m.timesofindia.com/city/chennai/Company-gets-notice-over-CCTV-in-rest-rooms/articleshow/25236911.cms?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=TOIChennaiNews
Company gets notice over CCTV in rest rooms
Nov 5, 2013, 03.39AM IST TNN
CHENNAI: Employees of a Velachery-based company have moved the Madras high
court against the management's alleged move to install closed circuit
television (CCTV) cameras at workers' rest room.
Justice N Kirubakaran, before whom the petition of Raptakos Brett Employees' Union came up for admission on Monday, ordered notices to the management and the deputy commissioner of labour.
When the matter was taken up for hearing, the counsel for the union N G R Prasad submitted that it would violate privacy and dignity of the employees if the company was allowed to install the cameras. He said there were 78 employees, including 10 women, adding that the management was in the process of installing 38 CCTV cameras on its campus.
Accusing the company of labour unfriendly measures, the union general secretary K P Babu said in his petition that the management was disallowing the workers from availing the common break for 15 minutes each, from 11am to 11.15 am and 4pm and 4.15pm. The management denied this customary break and directed the security personnel not to allow any worker to leave the premises during the break.
As this was opposed, the CCTV has been introduced, it said, adding that workers were unable to change into their uniforms be cause of the intrusive measure.
Justice N Kirubakaran, before whom the petition of Raptakos Brett Employees' Union came up for admission on Monday, ordered notices to the management and the deputy commissioner of labour.
When the matter was taken up for hearing, the counsel for the union N G R Prasad submitted that it would violate privacy and dignity of the employees if the company was allowed to install the cameras. He said there were 78 employees, including 10 women, adding that the management was in the process of installing 38 CCTV cameras on its campus.
Accusing the company of labour unfriendly measures, the union general secretary K P Babu said in his petition that the management was disallowing the workers from availing the common break for 15 minutes each, from 11am to 11.15 am and 4pm and 4.15pm. The management denied this customary break and directed the security personnel not to allow any worker to leave the premises during the break.
As this was opposed, the CCTV has been introduced, it said, adding that workers were unable to change into their uniforms be cause of the intrusive measure.
10/11/2013
Shopfloor love and caste realities!
The shopfloor has many stories of love affairs....someone reported sick and didn't turn up for days. Parents call up the management and report 'girl has not come back home from work'. Management enquires and eventually finds out that she has eloped with a boy, parents had opposed their marriage. Couples in the shop floor are common, not necessarily all married or intending to get married. A supervisor commits suicide over a love affair, a girl is heart broken over a jilted lover..so many stories. But what's so special about them, love affairs happen, hearts get broken, people get married...but what is interesting is the space where all this is happening. A space of production, a space where people work, earn their livelihoods...and in the process do they also earn their freedom? Freedom to choose whom they will marry, freedom to shake off some of the social barriers of caste and community, freedom to be 'free'? But are they really free? This 'freedom' is connected to their lives outside the shopfloor, beyond the factory gates..how does shopfloor love reconcile with the social and political structures outside? Sometimes its difficult to know what the reality is as one watches people everyday, because what one sees is only that day, that moment, only a tiny part of people's lives are revealed...it is difficult to research these most complex and intimate parts of people's lives. Do these relationships or 'alliances' challenge the dominant societal structures of caste? Or do they just remain contained in the small space of work?
I have been keen to look at fiction
because its too close to the reality, in some ways it creates the reality.The recent tragic
incidences of deaths and violence in Tamil Nadu over inter-caste
relationships/marriages are part of this cinematic narratives that plays out in
real life...its almost as if cinema sets the stage before the actual thing
plays out on the streets. Or one could say it is a two way process, since cinema takes cue
from real life and then projects it in larger than life canvas, makes it the
norm!
So are these young women and men on the shopfloor part of this cinematic narratives, a creation of cinema?
MADURAI, July 16, 2013
When reel life depicts love marriages as unreal
Parthiban and Meena in Cheran's film
“Bharathi Kannamma.”— PHOTO: THE HINDU ARCHIVES
Experts believe that caste politics
and Tamil cinema have a symbiotic relationship, since film as a medium often
constitutes a cultural sphere that contains representations of caste and
patriarchal relationships. The tragic end to the love story of Divya and
Ilavarasan and the related incidents of violence and the anti-Dalit campaign
that preceded the events may necessitate a close look at onscreen depiction of
inter-caste based love relationships in Tamil films, especially if it involves
a Dalit protagonist.
One of the important aspects of
screen narrative pertains to how idioms of caste are represented. Films have an
important role and life outside cinema halls. Anand Pandian, Associate
Professor, Department of Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University, argues that
films “have come to provide a language for the social life of kinship and
attachment.”
Kaadhal (2004) – a low budget film about a romance between a couple
of unspecified castes who are nevertheless identifiable as a girl from a
dominant caste in Madurai and a Dalit boy – is one such example the narrative
excludes the possibility that love between a Dalit boy and an intermediate
caste girl could blossom into a happily married life. In the film, when the
couple elope to Chennai, the director creates clever plot devices to ensure
that they are not shown sleeping together in the three nights they spend in
Chennai. The third day they get married, but the heroine’s relatives separate
them and the boy is beaten to pulp. Here, caste purity is kept intact by
denying the possibility of conjugality. The film ends with the heroine, an
unhappily wedded mother pillion-riding her same-caste husband, spotting the
hero as a mad man at a traffic signal.
Dalit writer Stalin Rajangam says
that although the central narrative of film Kaadhal (2004) and later Paruthi
Veeran (2007) are supportive of the idea of love marriage, they operate on
a different plane of social understanding when examined from a different angle.
The films have authentic markers which glorify a particular caste’s subculture
and also cleverly depict that inter-caste marriage is not a possible reality
between the dominant and Dalit castes.
Cinematic offerings that closely
adhere to the subcultures of intermediate castes have not only provided a
framework for discussing caste, but also a template by which dominant castes have
sought to reinforce their dominance, according to Hugo Gorringe, Senior
Lecturer, University of Edinburgh. One could see a relationship between the
portrayal of intermediate caste valour on the silver screen and the
mobilisation of these castes around such concepts in the political sphere.
In the film Bharathi Kannamma
(1997), which came during a time when large-scale violence and caste clashes
rocked southern Tamil Nadu, is a story of a dominant caste girl falling for a
Dalit boy who works in their home.The film ends with the heroine
committing suicide as she is neither able to break the patriarchal nor caste
code and the hero, a Dalit who is unable to bear the loss, jumps into the pyre.
The recent hit Kumki (2012),
a story involving love between an elephant herdsman and a girl from a
traditional hill tribe that preserves caste purity and tradition at any cost
also reiterated that inter-caste marriages are not healthy for society and the
film’s narrative sends out a message that it would be disastrous to do such a
thing. The film’s reviews did not highlight this aspect of preserving tradition
against modernity through caste rigidity.
In fact, Pattali Makkal Katchi
founder S.Ramadoss had appreciated the movie for its narrative and theme
against inter-caste love marriage.
Research Scholar, A. Jaganathan of
Madurai Kamaraj University, who has worked on caste in Tamil films says this
trend has persisted for long. “Films which have Dalits as male
protagonists always end with the hero’s death, and he dies to prove his
sincerity in love, the fact that gets hidden here is that by showing the
non-mixing of blood with sacrifice, caste purity is kept intact.”
11/11/2013
Promises Delivered!
Went to a small village called Chennakuppam near Oragadam Koot road (Sriperumbadur Taluk) yesterday with a student of journalism. Some of us have been visiting Oragadam to talk to the migrant workers who have flocked in 1000s in the villages dotting this area in search of work in the automobile industries that have been set up in this place. A quick internet search will tell you that this is 'Detroit of India', 22 Fortune 500 companies have invested here, investments worth $3billion has been made in Oragadam-Sriperumbadur area. One internet site even described the place as 'The catalyst of India's growth'.
We were curious to know what this catalyst of growth meant for people living there, not the migrant workers alone, but people who have lived here for generations. Are they also part of the 'growth vandi (car)' or they have been left on the way side? I keep coming back to this village, I have much longer connection with it. This village once saw a spirited fight by a handful of dalit families to save their tiny pieces of land from a multinational auto giant-Renault Nissan Alliance. But they didn't succeed. How could they? 13 poorest of the dalit families against an 'auto alliance' of two giant companies that together sell more than one in cars worldwide (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault-Nissan_Alliance) and a state government that wants to make 'Detroit of India' a reality? No match really.We went to homes of some of these dalit families who were part of the Bhoodan (land) struggle. The villages in Tamil Nadu are clearly demarcated. The Hindu upper caste habitations on one side and the 'colony' where the dalits live on the other. We went to the colony where the 'adi dravidas' (the literal translation would be the original inhabitants of the Dravida land) live.
There are two sets of people living in this village. One is the burgeoning population of migrant workers, over a thousand of them living in 10s and 20s in small rooms or shacks (see http://tnlabour.in/?p=1913)and the local families. Both sets of people work in the factories in the surrounding area.
Swaminthan anna and his wife Nirmala, both leaders of the Bhoodan struggle once, have now started working in the factories. In her piece of land where she toiled once to grow millets and other farm produce, now stands the gleaming Renault Nissan factory, where she now works as a housekeeping staff. The only difference is, as she says "there is no dignity in this work. When the land was ours, we toiled hard, grew our own food, it was ours. Now I work for the company, clean dirt, carry waste, work 3 shifts, even night shifts, my life has become hard". With a family to support, including a handicapped son and his family, both aging Swaminthan and Nirmala now work in the factories as housekeeping staff or security gaurd, bringing in maybe Rs 8000-10,000 per month between them. "But look at the cost of food. We used to grow rice, millets (raagi), now we buy all this in market for Rs 40-50 a kilo. Whatever we earn goes into buying food for the family".
Story of Saraswathi amma and her daily wager husband is the same. One works as a house keeping staff in an electronics factory, and the other travels to distant places to look for work. Many women from the village have found jobs with house keeping contractors in the big factories, while men work as daily wagers or as security guards. "They don't give jobs to our sons and daughters in these factories, some of them have even done ITI trainings"--this is a common lament we heard at different houses. As per villagers, young men and women are not given jobs in the shop floor, the jobs they get, if they do, are mostly peripheral. "My son got a job inside the factory because he lied about his place of residence, he gave a different address. If he had said he is from this village, he wouldn't have been given a job inside" informed Swaminthan.
Why do companies do that? Is this politics of space since local people will be able to draw support and solidarity from their families and villages located close by, whereas workers who come from outside are not able to do so? Are these strategic management decisions or practices? After all the workers or operators who operate machines or do the shop floor work are also from rural villages with similar social or educational profile, they are trained on the job. So why transport workers from 50-60 kms away to the factories and not train and employ the ones who are staying close by?
Experiences of work seems to be very rooted in the particularity or specificity of a place. Who gets work, what kind of work they get, experiencing the work seems very specific to the context under which it is being done.
13/11/2013
Cycle of precarity!
I am meeting a young woman today who just lost her job. After working in a global firm for two years, even though as an 'external labour' with a knowledge of being a 'temp', when the 'break' actually happened the feeling is quite different. Over the phone she said "i have been given a break, no job"...a sensed anxiety and helplessness in her voice. Like her, two other girls who were working in the factory got a 'break' last thursday as they went to work.An atmosphere of uncertainty exists in the workplace where these young women worked as the firm undergoes a massive restructuring with an impending global merger. No one knows whose job is going to be axed next. Just a few weeks ago, when I met these women on the assembly line, they nervously told me 'from January we will have no job'. But January is still two months away, the girls lost their jobs all of a sudden when they came to work on day.
As they worked 8 hours shifts everyday standing next to the permanent workers, they had perhaps forgotten for a moment how dispensable they were, the 'temps', the flexi-labour that companies hire and fire to 'ramp up' and 'ramp down' as their production volumes fluctuates! Treated like those inanimate products that these companies make, forgetting that these are people--flesh and blood.
This morning I was reading Ranabir Samaddar's 'Primitive accumulation and some aspects of work and life in India' (EPW, May 2009), where Samaddar talks at length about who are the workers in India today? He talks of the 'nesting of the informal within the formal' where 38% of the 40% informal non agriculture labour is actually employed in the formal sector. In India, informal workforce constitutes over 90% of the total workforce, in which about 60% is in the farm work and rest in non-farm work. The bulk of the non-farm informal employment is in the formal sector.
14/11/2013
I could not meet her, the contract worker, she had gone out looking for work. She called me to say she has landed a job on contract with a neighbouring factory. She sounded relieved. I was left thinking about the cycle of precarity that she is forced to enter due to the way production is arranged around contractual system, specially in these global production networks employing young workers.
Many of the contract workers of the factory have been laid off recently. Laying off contract workers is not unusual for companies. The rationale behind 'contract system' hire and fire when you need them! Contractual system in production has been one of the main causes for the increasing precarity amongst the workers....its a constant state of insecurity which affects the personal lives of the workers and their families. Much has been written about it.
I am finding it very difficult to meet any of the contract workers who have been laid off recently from the factory I have been researching. Most of them have returned home either to visit families, tend to their sick relatives, or just because paying room rents without a job is not easy.
24/11/2013
The sense of insecurity is not just amongst the 'temps' but also amongst the so-called 'secured' workers. I think to understand the state of insecurity amongst workers, one needs to understand the way global production systems work, how global capital and finances operate. Take for instance the case of Nokia mobile phones factory near Chennai. Jobs of thousands of workers seems shaky with the company caught in a tax shenanigan with the government even as it plans to sell out to Microsoft.
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/industry-and-economy/info-tech/nokia-employees-mull-legal-options-to-unfreeze-chennai-assets/article5380287.ece
Nokia employees mull legal options to unfreeze Chennai assets
T. E. Raja
Simhan
Nokia
factory at Sriperumbudur. Photo: T.E. Raja Simhan
Chennai,
Nov. 22:
Nokia India
Thozhilalargal Sangam (Employees Union) — representing the workers at the
company’s production facility near Chennai — is unhappy with the possibility of
being left out of global acquisition by Microsoft due to the tax authorities
freezing the Finnish handset manufacturer’s assets over unpaid dues.
The union
will explore legal options if the current imbroglio between Nokia and the Tax
Department affects Microsoft’s take over of the unit at Sriperumbur, said its
Treasurer P. Suresh. The Tax Department has claimed that Nokia India owes it
over Rs 4,000 crore in unpaid dues and froze its assets earlier this year. The
company has approached the Delhi High Court over the issue.
However,
with companies setting December 12 as a deadline for the deal globally, unless
the issue is resolved by then the Chennai production facility could be left
out. This would mean that one of Nokia’s largest production facilities will act
as a vendor, provide ‘a transitional service’ for about six to 12 months, till
the issue is resolved. Microsoft is not interested in Nokia India providing
indemnity and does not want to be associated with the liability in any way,
said a reliable source.
However, the
employees’ union, which is management-recognised and signed a long-term wage
settlement in March, is not happy with the compromise. At a meeting of the
office-bearers and the Executive Committee today, it has decided to wait till
November 28 when the issue is to come up before the Delhi High Court, said a
union source.
“We have
told the management that if nothing happens, we may be forced to approach the
Madras High Court for a solution,” Suresh said.
“With
Microsoft announcing the acquisition of Nokia, we were happy and were hopeful
that we will get a better deal. but we are worried that they may be left out of
the deal ,” he told Business Line.
The
association has nearly 5,300 employees in its fold.
Suresh said
the average age profile of employees in the unit was around 25 years, and “we
are just starting our life. When something like this happens, we are really
worried. Nearly 30,000 families are benefited by Nokia,” he said.
Nokia agreed
to pay part of the Rs 4,000-crore claimed by the tax authorities as an interim
measure.
3/12/2013
'Modern Times'
You may laugh while watching Charlie Chaplin's antics as a worker in an assembly line---his hands moving mechanically screwing the bolts while walking around day dreaming or his startled face as he sneaks a little break trying to rest his back and smoke a cigarette in the restroom with the manager's sudden image flashing on the TV screen installed inside the toilet...fast forward this black and white 1930's classic movie set during the 'great depression' in America to the assembly lines of electronics factories near Chennai...and its no movie anymore set 70 years back, its a reality workers face daily on the shop floor even today. Chaplin's commentary on the indignity at workplace faced by the workers still holds true even today.
Last week Taiwanese multinational and world's biggest
electronics contract manufacturer- Foxconn introduced a new system for
monitoring the movement of its workers in the workplace in its
Sriperumbadur plant located inside the Nokia SEZ Park. Each time a
worker (operator) leaves his or her work station, they have to swipe
their cards so that the management knows how long they have been away
from their work stations. "We get 10 minutes toilet break 2 times and a
30 minutes lunch break in our 8 hours shift. If we get late even by a
few minutes, we get reprimanded by our line leaders", said one of the
female workers, who was heckled by her line leader two weeks back for
being late in coming back to her work station from her toilet break. She
was mensturating and needed some extra time. "But now, from last week,
they have introduced this swiping card system, which means every time we
leave the line, we will need to swipe our cards. So they can now
monitor every movement of ours, we are so unfree".
This extreme form of surveillance was also introduced in
another US multinational company Sanmina SCI located in Sriperumbadur in
June this year. "The company started a 'movement register' in which
workers had to note what time they leave and come back to the line every
time they go to the toilet or for any other reason", said S Kannan,
District Secretary, CITU. "This was absolutely unacceptable and Sanmina
female and male employees made complaints to the State Women's
Commission and Inspectorate of Factories to stop this practice". While
it is not known what actions these agencies took, but this abhorring
practice was stopped after the complaints were made by the workers.
Recently, workers from Raptakos Brett and Company Limited, a pharmaceutical company challenged its management's decision to install CCTV cameras in restrooms to monitor the movements of workers as they took break during rest hours. The management took this regressive step to minimize any interruption to the production. (http://news.outlookindia.com/
Did Chaplin ever imagine that even 70 years after the creation of 'Modern Times', that his classic comment on an oppressive work place will become a norm in the world of 'modern work'?
5/12/2013
Migrant and alone
I wrote a few days back about how work might be experienced differently by different categories of workers. I have been familiar, to some extent, with the work-lives of migrant workers in Oragadam area, mostly men, who come to work from different parts of the country, especially Orissa, Bihar, Jharkhand, Bengal and work in the automobile or auto component supplier companies located in oragadam-sriperumbadur industrial area. But recently I have been, as part of my research, interacting with different categories of women workers from one work site, which includes permanent and non-permanent workers, and also migrant workers. This entry is about the young migrant women, who are both 'free' and 'unfree' at the same time. When I met these young migrant women in their 'rented' rooms (rented by their employers), my first impression was, how free they were. It was the day before Deepawali and I went to meet some of these girls. They work with a French multinational that has been contracted for canteen services in the factory that I have been researching. Most of the girls were out with their 'lovers'. Some of them, I was informed, had more than one lover (as they referred to their boy friends). Most of there girls are from rural Orissa and had a fairly conservative upbringing. The informal network of family, friends, agents brought them here, but interestingly, not everyone come out to work due of distress or 'push factor'. There seems to be different reasons why these young women came here to work, some due to economic reasons, but some due to a sense of failure of incapable of doing anything at home (heard from several girls--'my family is not dependent on my income as such, we have farm, home or a petty shop, but i did not pass school exam, i did not know what to do, a friend said come and work here, so i came). But interestingly, none of them have told at their homes what work they do here. They feel a sense of shame in telling their families the exact nature of their work (serving food in canteen). Its ironical that some of them moved out their homes out of sense of failure, but then the work that they do also doesn't seem to give them any sense of pride. During my course of conversation with them, I sense contradictions in how they perceive their work-life, its a complex mix of frustrated dreams, aspirations and hope.
They earn money and have certain autonomy in how they spend it or how much they remit back home(migrant men may have a totally different experience or how they spend the money dependent on why they had migrated), there is also a sense of freedom in their association with men, with quite a few women having more than one boy friend. I get a sense that these alliances are just not romantic associations, but there is more to it-- 'someone to take care of', both monetarily and emotionally. Some of the young women have boyfriends who are either supervisors or have other security in terms of jobs. There are exchanges of gifts-both cash and goods, which these men provide the women besides 'looking out for' at work in terms of what work is allotted or conditions of work one is subjected to.
The 'freedom' (economically and socially) that they experience comes with a certain cost given their terms and conditions of service. Their service conditions make them very vulnerable both economically and emotionally to the dictat of their employers, who hire or fire or shunt them around from one site to the other, breaking their rather fragile social fabric or community that keeps them going in a alien land. A young woman recently experienced extreme insecurity when she fell sick and complained of being denied even basic medical facility and was shunted out of the work site moved to a far away place. This has caused a huge emotional and mental distress to her (and one more of her colleagues).
3/2/2014
The Black Sheep in the flock!
This morning Abdul knocked at my door and said "madam, i can't come to clean your car anymore". I asked why. "Because my malik and malkin has said that they pay my salary, therefore I can't work elsewhere". But you do this work in your personal time, after your duty hours, how can they restrict you to do anything in your free time, I asked incredulously.
Abdul is a 22 years old boy from Assam's Silchar town in Cacchhar District. He works as a security guard with the Force 1 security company and stays in Urur Kuppam (a fishing hamlet abutting affluent neighbourhoods of Besant Nagar, Adyar) with 7 other young men from Assam. Urur Kuppam has a substantial population of migrant young men from Orissa and Assam who work as security gaurds in Force 1 or G4S security companies. The security guards are deployed by the companies in different residential and commercial properties where they work 12 hours a day and sometimes do double shift, either to make that extra money or are forced to by their employers (security companies) who juggle man-power in multiple sites. The security guards are not paid uniform wages. It changes as per the negotiation between their employers and 'units' (residential flats/homes or commercial establishments) they guard. So the same guard can earn either higher or lesser salary for the same job depending on what the companies has negotiated with the client.
Abdul had made a few mistakes. One morning, before his 12 hours 'duty' ended, he decided to clean my car. Malkin saw it. Another time, he decided to help me with collecting a few handful of sand in a plastic bag while on duty. Malkin saw that again. Malkin has also noticed how her driver (a polite middle aged Tamil man) and security guards chat and laugh with me, offer their help at times or play badminton with my child. What a crime! Its not done. How dare Abdul, whom malik pays Rs 6000 a month (Force 1 pays Abdul this amount as wages after deducting its share from what they must have negotiated with the owner of the house), gives a plastic chair to sit through the 12 hours night shift, a fan and a toilet to use, can even imagine doing other odd jobs or offer his help to others? Doesn't the malik and malkin own his labour, his body and soul, even when he is not on duty? Abdul has indeed committed a big mistake! He decided to think and act freely and displayed compassion to another human being!!
It all started yesterday with Malik noticing a metal lock missing from a rusting cycle that has been lying idle for last few years in the backyard of the house. He accused Abdul and the other security guard Niranjan, a polite young boy from Behrampur Orissa, of stealing the lock. "Why should we steal? a lock? it may not even be worth Rs 30?" said Abdul. After berating Abdul and Nirajan and accusing them of theft, the house owners scolded them for helping 'that woman next door'. "we pay you salary, why do you talk to her? who asked you to help her?" Abdul's supervisor was called, given a sound hearing and asked to discipline his security guards. So the net result was Abdul doesn't get to make that extra income that he was trying to earn during off duty. "Madam, its not about money, its about our dignity. We are not even considered human being by these people. They have lot of money, but no heart. They think they give us salary and that's all we deserve. They don't even speak to us nicely, never even offered a cup of tea. I get Rs 6000 per month here, in earlier unit I used to get Rs 7500 and the people were so nice, they would speak to us nicely, give us a cup of tea every morning. We are human beings too. Its not about money" emphasised Abdul. During our conversation, the driver from the next door also joined in and said he too was scolded for helping me. "You are a driver, we pay you, why do you have to help her?"
Abdul left. I stood around feeling angry, isolated and helpless at once. These are my friends, my only friends amidst this upper caste-middle class neighbourhood. I know my child is safe playing on the street under the watchful eyes of the drivers, watchmen, the ironkar pati (ironing woman and her family). But people like me or Abdul or the driver are the 'others' in this milieu. For us to live and earn our livelihoods in these socially gated communities, we have to follow the dikats of the rulers, sell our labour without questioning, or we can pack our bags and leave.
I met her at the factory canteen. A pleasant young woman from Orissa, who like other migrant women have never told her family that she works cleaning dishes and serving food to factory workers who assemble phones. Her family thinks she does phone assembly. She and her 'boy friend' (from Bihar) recently got lured into a vicious 'prize' scam, where they were declared winner for entering a contest (sending correct name of actors for some movies) which was being advertised in some TV channel. They were informed by the prize organisers that they have won a SUV Van worth Rs 13 lakhs. The duo decided that they will take money instead of the SUV as they had no use of a car. The prize organisers agreed (there was no paper trail, only phone and sms communication) and said they have to deposit Rs 10,000 for claiming the prize money. An account number was sent and money was sent. But no prize money came. Subsequently, more demands were made and the duo ended up paying almost Rs 40,000 to scamsters, who kept promising to send the 'prize cheque'. The duo fell into a classic trap of making quick money to break the shackles of grind and poverty both at home and at work. Both of them are migrant workers with a french multinational company which contracts canteen service to other multinationals companies with factories around Chennai, make their workers work 12-16 hours a day, give them low wages anywhere between Rs 4000-6000, provide small rooms for accommodation where 16-20 workers fit in, sharing a room and a toilet. The lure of quick money can't be judged as 'pure greed' for these workers for whom daily life is such a grind, full of insecurity and indignity.
3/3/2014
Love in the time of metro
A small snippet in the Times of India caught my attention this morning. The heading said
"Working on a metro rail site is not only risky, but can often prove lonely. Far from..home, it is natural for hundreds of laborers to reminisce about their loved ones while building metro tunnels, elevated viaducts....And metro rail seems to have taken this into account and is trying to ensure that this sense of loniliness won't come in the way of safety. They have put up flex boards to instruct workers "concentrate on your work. Do not dream or think of personal problems while you work" reads one. The figure on a board displays a worker dreaming of a girl and painting a heart."
Reminds me a of a wonderful hindi film by Muzaffar Ali-'Gaman', means departure, starring Smita Patil and Farooq Shaikh. The song " Seene Mein Jalan, Aankhon Mein Toofaan" captures the sense of alienation, loneliness and fractured dreams of migrant workers.Seene mein jalan, aankhon mein toofan sa kyu hain...why does the heart burn, why is there a storm in the eye....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Rz6JfgCJtk&noredirect=1
I see these men every day as I travel in the bus to the field. Scaling great heights in their yellow hard hats and very little else in terms of protective gear, they place heavy iron rods, pre-fabricated cement blocks, building block by block, steel by steel...Chennai's pride, every local politician's dream.. the Chennai metro rail! But what do they get in return. Low wages, unsafe work conditions, broken limbs, tin roofed shacks, hate, scorn and suspicion of local Tamil nationalist groups and easy targets for the police!
Recently, a young female employee of Tata Consultancy Service (TCS) went missing in Chennai's IT corridor. She was later found murdered near her work place. The police came under tremendous political pressure (a few months to go before the state goes to poll for the parliamentary elections) and quite predictably arrested two migrant workers from Bengal. The two worked at a constriction site near TCS as per media reports. The police claim that the murdered woman was sexually assaulted, robbed and then murdered by these men before her body was dumped in a bush near her office. No other detail is available. A team of women activists went as a fact finding team to investigate the incident, but all their attempts to inquire was stalled by the company and police. The police, meanwhile, has asked companies to install more CCTV cameras, surveillance systems and beef up the security in the corporate complexes dotted around the areas. The place in question is the sprawling peri urban area in the southern side of Chennai, also known as IT corridor, where many IT companies, back-end services, IT SEZs have set up their offices. These offices attract a large army of young 'educated' migrant workers (not that they identify themselves as one) from all over the country. It also attracts 'other' workers (young men, some with their families), who live in shanties or in the rented rooms in the semi-rural areas to build the fancy offices or work in the petty shops and eateries dotted all around. These are hybrid spaces, with vestiges of rural settings, fast turning into urban spaces with high rises, shiny buildings, fast cars, men and women smartly dressed zipping around with their smart phones...a place so contrast, a great paradox that this country is, so obscenely stark, and yet oblivious to most.
http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/tcs-employee-murder-uma-maheswari-chennai-west-bengal-migrants/1/345657.html
TCS employee murder: Arrest of 2 Bengalis creates fear among migrants in Chennai
R. Ramsubramanian
Chennai, February 26, 2014 | UPDATED 12:16 IST
Dejected by the police's tardy investigations Uma Maheswari's relatives searched the area near the TCS complex and on February 22 her body was found just 200 metres away from her office with stab injuries. Sensing the seriousness of the crime K. Ramanujam, DGP himself visited the spot and ordered the CBCID enquiry. He also placed under suspension the local Inspector for showing a lethargic attitude in the case. On February 25, the CBCID claimed that it had cracked the case and announced the arrest of two Bengalis who were working as construction workers in nearby sites responsible for the murder.
"Ram Mandal and Uttam Mandal of Malda district of West Bengal were taken in to custody for the heinous crime. They are working in a tile manufacturing firm at the SIPCOT industrial complex near Chennai. Another team of our officers had already left for West Bengal to trace two other people who were also involved in this crime," said a senior CBCID official. Uma Maheswari was subjected to sexual assault too before her murder and her valuables including credit cards and cash were stolen from her the CBCID confirmed.
The incident has sparked some tension in the area with people demanding that migrant workers in Chennai should be sent back. Some fringe Tamil groups had already started talking against the migrants, but their voice is low as of now. Their voice gained some momentum when the Chennai police gunned down five migrant workers from Bihar in one of the most controversial encounter of sorts in February 2012. The police said that they were involved in a couple of bank robbery cases. The police also started blaming the migrants for the spurt in crime activities in the city and at one stage even attempted to launch racial profiling of migrants in Chennai. This move was stopped after human rights groups approached the Madras High Court.
But after a lull the latest incident has given ammunition to the fringe groups. "When we don't find adequate employment for our people, why should the government encourage these migrants? They are the root cause of all our problems, it is high time the government wake up and send them all back to their homes," K.Vimal, a local resident and a member of a fringe group, said.
Human Rights activists and intellectuals strongly condemn this attitude and blame the police for encouraging this talk. "You cannot blame the migrants for spurt in the crime activities. The statistics does not support this argument. Lakhs of migrants are working throughout Tamil Nadu. To ask them to go back to their homes is nothing but fascism. The migrants are subjected to untold exploitations and sufferings. More over the police does not allow feminists and human rights activists in this case to talk to the friends and relatives of Uma Maheshwari and it smacks of their attitude. It is high time the government wakes up and nip in the bud this nefarious tendency" says A.Marx, human rights activist in a telephonic conversation with the India Today.
6/4/2014
Lots have happened in these last few weeks since I posted anything on the blog. The most significant being Supreme Court dismissing Nokia's appeal against the Delhi High Court order directing Nokia to give a guarantee of Rs 35 billion over a tax dispute with Income Tax department before it can transfer it's Chennai plant (including the workers) to its new buyers Microsoft. (See:http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/03/14/nokia-india-court-idINDEEA2D08J20140314)
So what does this mean for the 5000 or more workers and staff of the Nokia factory? Nokia management seems unclear and non-transparent about it while hinting at down sizing the work force. This led the Nokia workers' union to protest (Hunger fast on 31st March 2014), to organise a press conference (27 March 2014), meet the officials at the labour and industries departments, demanding the government doesn't allow Nokia to close it's factory in Chennai.
READ AND HEAR VOICES OF THE WORKERS FROM THE PROTEST AT:'Nokia Dis-connecting people
http://tnlabour.in/?p=2124
11/4/2014
FLIGHT OF CAPITAL
Last evening I got a call. "Management has suddenly announced VRS, said we don't need so many workers. They will have to go. All the trainee operators will have to take compulsory scheme, that is they have no choice but accept what is offered and leave. The permanent operators are offered voluntary scheme, but they will push us all out". The call was from the union advisor of Nokia India Thozhilalar Sangam at 8 pm. I was as shocked as they were. Started calling up my friends (workers). None of them knew of this. Infact one of them had just finished her shift at 7 pm and was on her way back home. "No, I don't know. What are you saying?" The notice was put on the shopfloor in the second shift.
I sat at my desk, my mind working in a funny way, thinking... The 'happy Nokia family'. How puzzled I was at this 'happiness' in the factory when I started my field work last year. Each day in the factory I would imagine myself in this little bubble of 'happiness', those glib talks of the managers of how content the workers were 'Nokia connecting people', all the 'good welfare schemes'...
So what happened to that happiness? where are those managers? Has Nokia now decided to 'dis-connect' from its 'family' now that the job is done and its business as usual? Its business as usual. Profit has been reaped, millions of phones have been manufactured, market has been established, deals have been made, so no need to cover the face with a mask anymore. It can be taken off and the ugly face revealed. Of profit and greed, of shifty capital. Pack up and go. Prey on workers, resources, governments in some other country...the flight of capital begins...leaving a trail of destruction behind.
Thinking of Supriya(name changed)...sitting in her little thatched hut in a distant back of beyond village in Arakkonam. A 24 years old widow. Married when she was barely 17 years old, still in school, to a drunkard who drank himself to death. As we sat talking to her, her 5 years old son plays around with his cousins, at times sitting on her lap. Her parents, both 'coolies' doing 100 days work or daily wagers sit around looking lost. Her sister with her two young daughters are also living in this small hut, she left her drunkard husband too. Supriya's meager salary of Rs 5500 as a trainee operator supports the family. She has 3 more months to become a permanent operator. That may not happen now.
"I don't want to hear anything about the company. They simply threw us out. I was let out in January. Just asked to leave", said an indignant Mahesh (name changed) who worked in Nokia as a contract worker for 1.5 years.
"We should not take VRS. We need the job. This is important to us", said Anitha.
So many voices.
I travel back a little. I think of that small room in Kancheepuram. Buying 'paal'(milk) packet, tea tul, a packet of time-pass biscuit and heading to Lakshmi's room. Abhinaya, Satya, Lakshmi, Pooja are waiting. Kalpana joins us. We are all set for a nice long afternoon chat(s)... drinking tea, talking of home, families, of work, of boy friends, of 'nokia couples'. I sit back and think of all those moments I have shared with them. Really happy moments.
Will they fight back? I ask myself. I don't know.
I had never imagined when I started my research that this would all turn out this way. So quickly. In less than a year everything changed so dramatically...there were writings on the wall, everyone sensed it, spoke of it cautiously, anxiously, but never imagined that it would come so soon, so suddenly.
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/features/smartbuy/voluntary-retirement-deal-offered-to-workers-at-nokias-chennai-plant/article5897193.ece
Chennai, April 10:
Nokia India has
offered a voluntary retirement scheme (VRS) to its employees in the
manufacturing plant at Sriperumbudur. Details of the package are not
available.
“It is not compulsory. Employees can
decide to take it or not,” said a source in Nokia who does not want to
be identified. “We have set no target for the VRS in terms of the number
of employees. All of the employees coming forward are entitled to the
package. Staffing at Chennai has historically fluctuated based on demand
and the number of external employees used, with the current figure at
some 6,600 full-time employees,” the company said. A Soundararajan,
General Secretary, Centre of Indian Trade Unions, Tamil Nadu, under
whose leadership the labour union Nokia India Thozilalar Sangam
functions, told Business Line, “We oppose the VRS scheme. It is
an indirect way to send people away. We will advise our members not to
accept it. The management has taken this decision without consulting
us.”
Nokia India recently indicated that manpower
reduction would be likely at the plant due to uncertainty over
continuing operations. The Income Tax Department had frozen the
company’s assets last year over a tax dispute. The issue needs to be
resolved soon to enable Nokia to transfer the same assets to Microsoft
as part of a $7.4-billion global deal.
Nokia said it
regularly reviews its manufacturing strategy to optimise and ensure the
smooth and timely delivery of its products. This process considers many
factors, including the predictability and stability of the regulatory
environment in host countries. “Following such a review, we launched a
VRS. Nokia is offering a clear financial option for interested factory
employees. We feel this package offers staff the chance to seek new
opportunities outside the company based on a firm financial footing,”
the company said.
(This article was published on April 10, 2014)
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