India: hard data towards the rights of unorganized workers’ decent living income

By L.A. Samy, 

Steering Committee member for India, 

Executive Director of AREDS

Why study the informal sector with regards to a decent living income?

In India, the size of the informal sector, which comprises 94% of the worker population, is increasing day-by-day and it has been accelerating at an alarming level with the implementation of globalization policy in 1991. Since India was an agrarian nation, it was the agricultural sector that provided employment opportunities to millions of illiterate and literate masses in India. Next to the agricultural sector, it was the small scale and the cottage industries which provided livelihood opportunities to millions of people in India. 

The entire scenario has changed now, as the corporate agro-industries like Monsanto started dominating the Indian agricultural sector. Today, agricultural pattern has completely been mechanized and consequently, millions of agricultural labourers were thrown into streets as unemployed. They were forced to migrate to cities and towns seeking new livelihood opportunities. With the agricultural inputs becoming expensive, small and marginal farmers were also forced to sell out their lands and look for alternative employment opportunities. Most of them ended up as construction workers as the construction sector and the real estate business became the third largest sector in providing employment opportunities.

As millions of people thronged cities in search of livelihood, a new line of work emerged – domestic work. With the growing middle class and both husbands and wives working, the need for taking care of household works like cooking, washing, housekeeping etc. also grew. Hence, the unorganized sector included the domestic workers as one of its groups.        

Unlike the organized sector workers, the unorganized sector workers enjoy few workers’ rights and little towards decent income and social security. India has a Minimum Wage Act but the minimum wage they get is not good enough to meet even the basic needs of a family. Employers can hire and fire them according to their whims and fancies. Impermanency of jobs and meager salaries render the life of unorganized sector workers miserable in the midst of increasingly more expensive essential commodities.

Therefore, government has devised and implemented many social security schemes for the unorganized workers. However, whether these schemes are accessible and beneficial to the workers and if the existing legal mechanisms are instrumental in ensuring living income to the workers are big questions. Hence, India partners felt there was a need to study the access of the informal sector workers to the social protection schemes and what was the gap between their wages and a decent living income.

How was the study done?

Accompanied by a research team, the five WSM partners in India undertook this study:

1. AREDS - Association of Rural Education and Development Service),
2. CFTUI - Confederation of Free Trade Unions in India),
3. CWM - Christian Workers’ Movement India,
4. NDWM - National Domestic Workers’ Movement
5. YCW - India Young Christian Workers

They chose to focus on three segments of the unorganized sector: agricultural labourers, construction workers and domestic workers – and made a comprehensive study in ten Indian states: Delhi, Bihar, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Telungana, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.  The study included surveys and focus group discussions, as well as secondary data, such as legislation analysis, statistics and other documents from ILO etc.

What did the study find?

• Out of a workforce in India of 457 million people, 92% are informal workers and contribute over 60% of India’s GDP
• Cultivators and agricultural labourers represent 58% of the workforce in India
• There is a lot of interconnectivity between segments: when labourers leave agriculture, they go for seasonal construction work or many households combine a domestic worker with an agricultural labourer
• Over half of them are a part of a household with five family members and for 41,7%, they are the only provider
• 57% are illiterate and 64% are unaware of labour laws
• Out of 26 states, 19 have minimum wages below poverty line (poverty line = 2€/day)
• Trade union density is at 6,5% and only 10% are aware of trade unions. However, there is a direct correlation between trade union membership and access to social security schemes
• 71% of the respondents did not have membership in any welfare boards or institution
• Only 18,5% of the budget for social security in Tamil Nadu was spent through over 16 schemes, because many workers are unaware of their rights to apply for coverage
• 85% are not satisfied with current wages
• 62% work for more than 8 hours/day
• 88% do not get paid leave
• Less than half manage to save anything, and 62% of savings are spent on medication
• Around 403,000 people in India die every year due to work‐related problems, about 46 every hour (source: ILO)

 Construction workers

• 99% of construction workers have no written job contract
• Globally, 100 000 construction workers are killed every year, representing 25% of all fatal injuries in the workplace (Source: BWI)
• 47% of the respondents from construction sector feel they have already risked their life
• Daily wages: 4,5€ for women, 5€ for men
• Women construction workers may carry single loads of up to 51 kilos, far more than the weight limit recommended by occupational safety and health standards for women. Most unskilled women laborers can only work for 8, or at most 12 years, before their bodies give out, and they face a life of chronic health problems (source: ILO)

Agricultural workers

• Government should guarantee work for 100 days/year but pay less than 1€ per day
• 58% started working before 10 years old
• Agricultural workers can find very little paid work: less than 10€/month and 75 days of work only
• 300.000 suicides of farmers have been registered over the last decade

Domestic workers

• Social insecurity pushes women that are widows or divorced to do domestic work, exposing them to sexual harassment;
• 56% of domestic workers have been sexually harassed
• Salary: between 20€ and 40€/month
• 78% of domestic workers get maximum 4 to 5 hours work per day
• 29% of domestic workers are members of trade unions
• 10% of domestic workers receive social security
• Roughly 20% of domestic workers are under 14 years old

How was the study used?

The report of this study has been made into a book ‘Social Protection of Informal Sector Workers and Existing Rights to ensure Decent Living Income.’ Of course, this book will serve as a valid and logical document to lobby with the government for enacting laws and Acts in favour of legal living income which would help the families of the unorganized workers lead a dignified life.  The study was released in Delhi by officials of Belgian Embassy and the copies were received by ILO officials in the presence of the Indian partners. The ILO officials remarked that this is the study they were looking forward and they would like to work with WSM partners in the exercise of formulating the decent living income for Indian unorganized workers.

The study was shared with all the labour unions, academia, students and organizations that are involved with the unorganised workers. Many of them welcomed the study and said that they will use the findings and recommendations in their lobby advocacy actions both at the state and at the National level.

A long way to go, but we are very sure; in solidarity we can reach our goal.

Illustration: the Madurai Declaration

The election for the Tamil Nadu State Assembly started on the 16th of May 2016. At this time, Campaign on Informal Sector Workers’ Rights has released the ‘Madurai Declaration’ which is a charter of demands centering on the social security and living income. It is an electoral manifesto of the unorganized workers. The study findings and recommendations were used in drafting this declaration.  It opposes the concept of development at the cost of livelihood resources of common people; it voices for safeguarding the rights of tribal people, fishermen, sanitary workers, farmers and forest dwellers; it protests the implementation anti-farmer and anti-agricultural policies of the government and demanding the national government to ratify the ILO convention 183 of the Domestic workers. Many findings from the study have been reflected in the Madurai Declaration.