Working conditions, home work and strikes

Mines: India's coal mines employ about 5.5 lakh workers. The Mines Act, 1952, set rules for safety and working hours; it is now part of the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020.

But small mines and quarries often ignore the rules. Miners face floods, fires, poisonous gas, roof collapses, and lung diseases like silicosis and tuberculosis from breathing dust.

Women workers: young women migrate from Kerala and elsewhere to work in fish processing units. The work brings loneliness, poor housing and long hours, but also some independence and income of their own.

Home-based work: many products are made in homes, mostly by women and children: bidis, zari (gold thread embroidery), agarbattis (incense sticks), papads and more. They are paid piece-rate (per item made), at very low rates, with no benefits. Take bidis: tendu leaves are collected by tribal people, then pass through many hands, contractors, rollers and factories, before reaching the market. Each middleman takes a share.

Strikes and lockouts:

• Strike: workers stay away from work to press their demands.
• Lockout: management shuts the gate and keeps workers out.

Strikes are hard to sustain: workers lose wages while management can often wait. The Bombay textile strike of 1982, led by the trade union leader Datta Samant, lasted nearly two years. In the end it failed; many mills closed, and thousands of workers lost their jobs for good.

Laws exist; enforcement is weak: the protection on paper often does not reach the workers who need it most.