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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Women Workers in the Factory -Apoorva Kaiwar

Women Workers in the Factory -Apoorva Kaiwar

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published Published on Aug 16, 2014   modified Modified on Aug 16, 2014
-Economic and Political Weekly


How will the amendments to the Factories Act affect women workers? How do women view the "protections" and night work?

Apoorva Kaiwar (akaiwar@yahoo.co.in) is a labour lawyer and consultant on issues of gender and labour.

The central government is proposing to amend several labour laws. The process of amending them has been underway since 2011, which means that it is not only the new dispensation that is eager to make these amendments; such changes in labour law were on the agenda of the previous government too. Without going into ­either the merits or the desirability of all the amendments proposed, I would like to look at some of the amendments to the Factories Act1 through which women workers will be specifically affected.

The logic that a factory has to employ a certain number of people for it to be governed by the Factories Act, and for its workers to get facilities such as toilets and drinking water, begs the question as to why the most vulnerable of workers - those working in small factories - should be lawfully deprived of even their basic rights as workers. This is a question that many trade unions have continued to ask. Small entrepreneurs no doubt need some amount of protection from the state, but there is no reason as to why this should be at the cost of their workers, who are obviously worse off.

When benefits to women workers are spoken of, maternity benefit is the first mentioned, followed closely by the provision for crèches. The provision in the Factories Act states that every factory which employs more than 30 women workers should have a crèche. This provision reiterates the notion that women are primarily responsible for the care and nurture of children. Such an assumption hinders women from participating actively in society. Trade unions have demanded that crèches be provided irrespective of the gender of the workers.2 The present proposed amendments do not include this at all, even though removing restrictions on women workers is one of the planks on which the amendments are proposed. But then, it is to be supposed that the amendments will deal with only such restrictions as will help employers, such as an increase in working hours and making night shifts permissible for women, rather than women workers.

The removal of restrictions on women workers has been done in two ways - one, in allowing women to work in some operations which was not allowed earlier, such as cleaning, lubricating and ­adjusting prime-mover or transmission machinery and pressing cotton where a cotton opener is at work,3 and two, in removing the restriction on women to work at night. Whether this removal of restrictions will help women is a moot point.

‘Protecting Women'

One of the reasons many of the post-­second world war laws disallowed women from working in certain occupations, operations and sectors was to ensure that able or somewhat able men returning from the war would be able to get jobs in factories.4 Though couched in terms of "protecting women", the laws, in effect, protected men. Women did this work when the men were not in the factories. Some of the restrictions, like the ones mentioned above, seem neither logical nor are they related directly to a woman's reproductive health, which is one of the foremost reasons given as to why women should not work in certain operations. Nor were all women working in factories necessarily in the "reproductive age" group. Women's employment pattern follows a U-curve, as has been amply demonstrated by several studies. Women work when they are young and unmarried. Once they get married, they stop paid work for some years during which they are expected to engage in child bearing and rearing. They come back to work in their mid-30s, presumably once the children have grown up. Even today, though they are returning to work early, women workers, especially those working in factories, leave their jobs once they get pregnant. Given all this, it is hard to ­believe that restrictions on women working in certain operations stemmed from "protecting" them. The question also arises as to protection from what.

The proposed amendments have removed restrictions in the two operations mentioned above, involving cotton openers and prime movers. However, the restriction continues to hold for "dangerous operations". Apart from being inconsistent, shouldn't all workers be protected from "dangerous operations"? If one looks at Section 87 which deals with "dangerous operations", the rules that the state government is empowered to make for such operations and for the workers engaged in them should anyway be made for all operations and all workers who are at risk. And why should one not also extend the notion of "dangerous ­operations" to all workshops and factories irrespective of the number of workers, particularly since even now, the government doesn't deem it safe for women to work in these operations/­processes?

Night Work

On the issue of night work, the debate has been long-drawn. The latest round of discussions among some women's organisations began in 2005, where an amendment to the provision banning night work for women was sought to be introduced.5 However, this proposed amendment seems to have died a natural death, as there is no further information about it in the public domain. There is an obviously erroneous reference to the amendment being passed in a study conducted by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) and the National Commission for Women.6 Though the women workers who were some of the respondents in the study did raise issues about how night work adversely affects them, the report goes on to conclude blithely that the problems that the women workers were facing could not be attributed to night work.

Aside from this, the debate on night work has not really considered the points of view of those women who have been doing night shifts - nurses and women working in fisheries. What do these women think about working at night? What do they think needs to be done to make working at night easier/better for women? Of course, the proposed amendment states that women will be allowed to work if there are adequate safeguards as regards occupational safety and health, provision of shelter, restrooms, lunchrooms, night crèches and ladies' toilets, protection from sexual harassment, and their transportation from the factory premises to the nearest point of their residence. In addition, it also mentions "equal opportunity for women workers, adequate protection of their dignity, honour and safety", which doesn't seem to make much sense in the context. But, how will we talk about women and night work without referring to their dignity, honour and safety? How this dignity, "honour" and safety are to be adequately protected is not specified. Maybe the provision for ladies' toilets will take care of it, like the assertion that if only there were toilets in the house, the Badaun rapes would have been prevented.

What is missed out in concentrating only on safety and transport in discussions on women workers is a lot of detail on who, how much and when? When a friend and I spoke to workers working in the Nokia special economic zone (SEZ) in Sriperumbudur, employed by one of the suppliers of Nokia, what we found was that women were not allotted the second shift, as that would mean they would leave the factory at 10 PM, which was unsafe. This meant that women workers were working in the night shift every alternate week, while men workers were working in the night shift only once in three weeks. Leave alone "protecting women", this was penalising the women workers for being women!

In the same SEZ, some of the young women interviewed said they liked working in the night shift for one week in a month. It gave them some time during the day off, which they otherwise would never have, and were able to both attend to chores as well as have some entertainment. Some others said it was very tiring and that they did not like working at night. There will never be one stand on this, as on many things, but the opinions of women workers should not be ignored.

In their submission made to the ­labour ministry with regard to the proposed amendments, the Garment Labour Union has said:

... as women workers and a union whose membership primarily consists of women workers, we welcome it (removing the ban on women working at night) in principle. However, there are a number of issues that ought to be considered prior to amending the provision and bringing it into effect. Women end up doing most of the housework in their homes. On the days that they are home during the day, it takes up much of their time and they hardly get any time to rest. With the wages that garment workers get, they cannot afford to employ anyone to help with housework. If they work in the night shift, they will not be able to rest the next day, and this will have an adverse impact on their health. Moreover, most households are women-headed households, where the woman garment worker is the only able adult. If she has to work at night, her children will be forced to stay alone during the night which is not safe. Garment workers, due to their low wages, also end up doing some petty jobs such as small trading and sometimes even paid domestic work. In addition, there are also concerns of safe and reliable transport. In the circumstances, it is submitted that night work for women not be imposed upon them at this stage. If the prohibition is sought to be removed, there should be an additional clause to the effect that if any woman worker refuses to work in the night shift, she shall not be penalised.7

Though these points are valid, the answer cannot be a prohibition on women working at night. That men should do their share of housework is a battle that will have to be fought irrespective of whether women work at night or not.

Women as an Afterthought

The question is actually a larger, or at least, a slightly different one. Despite the fact that some of the earliest factory workers were women, whether in textile or paper mills, from the 19th century onwards, in England and the United States, and in the early 20th century, in India, neither the employers nor the state, have considered factory workers to be women. This is particularly true of traditional societies. The factory, or any workplace for that matter, is meant for men. Women are an afterthought. This is amply demonstrated in the number of ladies' compartments in the Mumbai ­locals as compared to the general ones, the number of ladies' buses, and indeed the number of toilets meant for women in factories.

Of course, the discomfort of imagining women in the factory is less than imagining the women at night. Nights are not meant for women. A woman cannot be out at night. If she is, then she is obviously asking for it, whatever the "it" may be.

With night work, the setting gets complicated. Women at night in the factory - a double whammy! How do we reconcile this at all? For reconcile we must, since the exigencies of production, nay profits, compel us to do so. And therein lays the rub. And we fall back on adequate measures for the "protection of women's dignity and honour" to do our work.

These measures are never explained or detailed, because they cannot be. What we need to do is to first acknowledge that women have a right to be where they want to be, when they want to be. And this - where, when, what, is the problem, not just of execution, but of imagination.

Notes

1 http://labour.nic.in/upload/uploadfiles/files/latest_update/what_new/ 53994ae87860bBriefforNIC.pdf

2 One of the national trade union centres, NTUI, included this in their Workers' Charter for the General Elections. See http://ntui.org.in/images/articles/Workers_Charter_2014_Web_version.pdf, accessed on 10 July 2014.

3 One doesn't know how many of these technologies are currently in use.

4 This opinion/analysis comes from women comrades and activists of the "independent" left, both in India and abroad. I am yet to come across any reference for this.

5 http://pib.nic.in/newsite/erelease.aspx?relid =9027, accessed on 10 July 2014.

6 ncw.nic.in/pdfreports/night%20shift%20for %20women.pdf, accessed on 10 July 2014.

7 Submission dated 1 July 2014 by the Garment Labour Union to the Ministry of Labour. Copy on file.

Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLIX, No. 33, August 16, 2014, http://www.epw.in/commentary/women-workers-factory.html


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