People's Democracy

DELHI

Home Based Women Workers March For Rights

Sehba Farooqui

IN the run-up to the International Women�s Day, Delhi state committee of the Janwadi Mahila Samiti (JMS) organised a huge march of home based women workers on March 3, at Jantar Mantar. Nearly 1000 home based women workers from different areas of Delhi participated in the march.

Brinda Karat, Rajya Sabha member, addressed the gathering. She said the UPA has continued to ignore the interests of vast sections of the people in our country in favour of the rich. Be it price rise or adverse impacts of the economic crisis, the UPA has taken measures for the relief of only the big business of our country. AIDWA general secretary Ms Sudha Sundaraman released the report prepared by JMS on the basis of a survey conducted on the working conditions of home based women workers.

The JMS Delhi state committee has been raising the issue of home based women workers in Delhi who do piece rate work through contractors in different working class areas of Delhi. The aim is to seek protection for these working women from extreme poverty, hardship and exploitation. Our experience of working among women home based workers in different working class areas in Delhi reveals that home based women workers can be found in almost every other house, and that they largely work on a piece rate basis.

A large number of women in our country have been drawn into the informal workforce in order to supplement their meagre family incomes. The rising prices of essential commodities, lack of opportunities for gainful employment and growing household indebtedness have contributed to this trend. Implementation of the policies of liberalisation and privatisation has aggravated the trend towards casualisation of work. With shrinking job opportunities in the organised sector, women are getting drawn into the vast unorganised sector of our country. Women suffer from double burden of work --- running their households and earning a livelihood. Unfortunately, their labour often goes unrecognised.

Home based women workers comprise a large proportion of the workforce in our country today. According to the Arjun Sengupta committee report, of the total workers in the unorganised sector, 14.8 crore (32.3 percent) are women. More than half of them, nearly 8 crore women, do home based work like making bidi, doing zari, embroidery, or other handloom work, bindi sticking, stitching labels, and even hazardous work involving acids and chemicals etc. Also, 79 percent women home based workers work on piece rate basis, which is characterised by irregular or seasonal availability of work and delayed or reduced payment by agents or contractors on the pretext of poor quality.

The overall condition of work for these workers is extremely exploitative with no legal recognition as workers, no job security, no social security like old age pension, health insurance or provident fund, long hours of work and no implementation of the minimum wage norm. Women who do home based work regularly suffer from health hazards like backaches and failing eyesight. Since they work from their homes, they often do not perceive themselves as workers but as mothers and wives, while the employer ends up making more profits by paying lower wages as well as saving the cost of operating a workplace like rent, electricity, water, equipment and other maintenance costs. Today, home based workers, especially in export oriented units, are bearing the brunt of the global economic crisis. They are facing shrinking work availability on the one hand and a progressive reduction in piece rates on the other.

In 2004, when the UPA government came to power at the centre, it promised in its National Common Minimum Programme a comprehensive bill for social security of unorganised workers. The Arjun Sengupta committee, appointed by the government to look into the condition of unorganised workers concluded that 77 percent people of our country, i.e. 83.6 crore people, spend less than Rs.20 per head per day and live in poverty and hardship. It recommended that the government should provide social security benefits at the national level for unorganised workers like life and disability insurance cover for natural or accidental death of workers, health insurance for the worker and his/her family, monthly old age pension for the unorganised worker above the age of 60 years, provident fund, housing and education cover designed especially for unorganised workers.

In December 2008, The Unorganised Sector Workers Social Security Act was passed by both houses of parliament amid controversy. The act goes no further than accepting in principle that social security should be provided to unorganised sector workers. No new schemes have been announced and no specific financial allocation has been made. The act is no more than a statement of intent, and leaves the task of formulating social security schemes to state governments and subsequent union governments. It mandates respective state governments to constitute state level boards for formulating social security and welfare schemes, but these boards only have advisory powers.

In this backdrop, the JMS Delhi state committee conducted an interview based survey of home based women workers in different working class areas of Delhi. The survey reveals the dismal condition of work for these women. The survey reveals that after working on an average of nearly seven hours a day along with other family members, the home based workers in Delhi manage to earn only Rs 32.54 per day, whereas the daily minimum wage for unskilled workers in Delhi is Rs 140. They get work only for an average of 16 days a month. During the months of January and February 2009, amid a fresh round of campaign among these women, a large number complained of shrinking work availability and further decrease in piece rates.

A total of 363 women were interviewed for the survey. These are some shocking findings of our survey: 1. 30 paise per 24 inch mala, 2. Rs 4 for sticking bindis on 144 packets, 3. Rs 7 for gluing inside seal on 800 plastic bottle caps, 4. Rs 2 for decorating 200 cards and envelops in plastic display sheets, 5. 75 paise for making crochet coasters, 6. Rs 2 for picking 1 kg of round glass for handicraft work from broken piles of glass, 7. Re 1 for making 144 hair bands, 8. 80 paise for making 144 key rings, 9. Rs 20-25 for stitching a ladies suit, 10. Rs 2.50 for making a stuffed and embroidered toy, 11. 60 paise for making 144 whistles for toys, 12. Rs 7 for making 100 beads bangles, 13. Rs 6 for making 100 press elements, 14. Re 1 for neatly cutting 24 bands of slippers from rubber, and 15. Re 1 for filling 1 kg edible choona in small bottles (approx. 1000 bottles).

Of the interviewed home based workers, 10.15 percent elonged to the general category, while 48.62 percent were minorities, 20.92 percent were OBCs, 15.08 percent were dalits and 5.23 percent were tribals.  

Of all the women interviewed by us, 80.28 percent were married, 10.83 percent unmarried, 6.39 percent were widowed, 1.39 percent abandoned by their husbands and 1.11 percent divorced.

Only 25 percent women were born and brought up in Delhi, while most others were migrants from different states including UP (52.61 percent), Bihar (14.18 percent), Rajasthan, Harayana, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Orissa, AP, Assam, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, and West Bengal.

Of these women, 57.43 percent lived in their own houses in JJ clusters, resettlement colonies, etc, while 42.57 percent lived in rented accommodation.

The husbands or fathers of only 6.23 percent home based workers had permanent jobs, while 31.23 percent were daily wagers, 37.92 percent were in temporary or casual employment, 13.01 percent were self-employed and as high as 11.52 percent were unemployed. 

Their average family size was 5.92, with the largest families having 18, 17, 16, 15 and 13 members, respectively.

Their average combined monthly family income came to Rs. 2899 only, i.e., about Rs 489.70 per capita per month. As many as 53.91 percent families were living in debt, and 93.16 percent families could not manage any monthly savings and were living a hand to mouth existence.

33.63 percent of the families did not have any ration cards, only 6.43 percent had BPL (yellow) cards, 1.79 percent had Antyodaya (Red) cards, and 58.19 percent had APL (white) cards.

All the 363 home based women workers interviewed by us worked on a piece rate basis. Of them,

94.17 percent received piece rate work through contractors, 2.22 percent received from factories near their homes, and 3.61 percent were self-employed making small items and selling them to local shops.

The women worked in different parts of the day. While some choose to work at a stretch, others worked in slots in the morning, afternoon, evening and night. On an average, the women did piece rate work for 6.98 hours in a day.

In almost all the households, children or elders in the family helped the home based women workers in completing their daily quota of work. Thus, the labour of more than one person went into completing the task at hand. This form of child labour, wherein children engage in unpaid work in order to help their mothers, largely remains outside the ambit of general discussions on preventing child labour. Not only did the women have to bear a double burden of work, but in many households, other female family members like young daughters were also forced to shoulder the burden of domestic chores.

With the involvement of several family members in completing the piece rate work, the average monthly earning of these women came to only Rs 519.41. The maximum earning in a month was Rs 3000 and the minimum earning was as low as Rs 20.

Even with this meagre earning, 46.76 percent women were forced to spend their own money on tools and material like needles, thread, scissors, syringe, plastics, embroidery frame, etc. 

Some 17.59 percent women spent their own money on transport for obtaining and delivering work.

Thus, after working for nearly seven hours a day along with other family members, these home based workers managed to earn only Rs 32.54 in a day, whereas the daily minimum wage for unskilled workers in Delhi is Rs 140.

The most alarming aspect of their work was their decreasing piece rates. While the piece rates for 43.01 percent women has remained the same over time, only 16.06 percent had experienced an increase in piece rates. As high as 40.93 percent women claimed that their piece rates had decreased, i.e., they were compelled to do the same amount of work at a lower rate. For example, the rate for making embroidered stuffed toys has decreased from Re 1 per piece to 75 paise per piece, the rate for zardozi embroidery on suits from Rs 80 per suit to Rs 50 per suit, the rate for making frocks for dolls from 30 paise per frock to 25 paise per frock, the rate of making bead coasters for export purposes from Rs 9 per coaster to Re 1 per piece, etc. Yet, most of these women also claimed that they could not object to this reduction because they feared antagonising their contractors and losing their work. However, we did come across some women who chose to stop work due to falling piece rates.

As many as 88.98 percent of these women suffered from work related health problems like backache, weak eyesight, headache, pain in legs, watery eyes, injury in hands due to cuts by glass, injury in hands due to wet limestone, knee pain, stomach pain, shoulder pain, swelling, neck pain, stiff fingers, etc. Some of them suffered from more serious diseases like TB, kidney stone, stone in gall bladder, diabetes, thyroid disorder etc. However, most of the women left these problems untreated.

On the whole, we found that most of the women we interviewed did not view themselves as workers. They rather considered themselves as wives or mothers trying to make their little contribution to the family income. Many talked about being motivated to work because they could give better food to their children or give some money to them when they asked. Many women initially denied that they did piece rate work because they felt embarrassed that they earned less than even the beggars. However, many overcame their embarrassment after discovering that most other women around them did the same type of work.

In the run-up to the first International Women�s Day since the passage of this bill, the JMS also conducted a statewide signature campaign of home based women workers, seeking the following urgent steps from the Delhi government which will go a long way in improving the plight of these workers in Delhi: 

1) Constitution of a state level board for formulating social security and welfare schemes for all home based workers, and undertake sector wise survey of home based women workers in Delhi;

2) Provision of immediate registration and I-cards/�Smart Cards� to all home based workers;

3) Provision of pension, health insurance, maternity benefits, provident fund, housing and education cover to all home based workers; and

4) Provision of skill upgradation and other assistance to all home based workers.