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Mainstream Weekly (India)
May 7, 2005
SOCIAL SECURITY FOR UNORGANISED WORKERS
Bharat Dogra
After coming to Delhi from Chhattarpur (Madhya Pradesh) Mohan settled
in Bannuwal Nagar JJ Colony and started working as a mason. About
five years back he had an accident in which his leg was seriously
injured. This required long-term treatment in the course of which an
iron rod had to be inserted to enable him to walk. The contractor
paid him a subsistence wage for some time and then left him to his
own fate. Mohan worked as a vendor for some time but this work
collapsed recently, partly because of the fact that he walks very
slowly with the help of a stick. The accident has permanently
disabled Mohan from working as a mason. Now without any work on his
hands and little chance of finding any in future, Mohan faces a very
grim future.
There are a very large number of workers like Mohan in the
unorganised sector who do not have access to any form of social
security to help them survive in difficult times.
One of the gravest shortcomings of labour welfare in India has been
that while as many as 90 per cent of the workers are in the
unorganised sector, most of the welfare laws have not been applicable
to them. In some cases this happened because large sections of the
unorganised sector workers were outside the purview of these laws,
and in other cases because in practice the laws could not be applied
to unorganised sector workers.
Enacting protective umbrella legislation which can apply to all
sections of unorganised workers is not easy as a wide range of works
and occupations have to be covered. Some of these leading occupations
are those of agricultural workers, forest workers, rickshaw pullers,
vendors, domestic workers, home based workers, construction workers,
scavengers and rag pickers, wholesale/retail trade workers and
numerous others. Nevertheless, it is important to have a
comprehensive law that provides at least some protection for all
unorganised workers as the alternative is to have separate laws for
too many categories of workers-a task which is even more complicated
and time-consuming.
As welfare and social security laws will lose all credibility and
utility if the overwhelming majority of workers do not derive any
benefits from them, various reports of the Labour Ministry have been
emphasising the need for comprehensive protective legislation for the
unorganised sector workers; but still this work of crucial
significance has been delayed for too long. Finally, the Second
National Commission on Labour (NCL) was asked, as perhaps its most
significant task, to propose an umbrella type legislation for workers
in the unorganised sector. This legislation and the system that is to
be built around it, the Commission was told, should assure at least a
minimum protection and welfare to workers in the unorganised sector.
The NCL pointed out that out of the total work force of 314 million,
286 million are main workers. Out of the 286 million main workers,
259 million are in the unorganised sector.
The NLC Report (year 2000) said in its recommendations:
The way to extend legal protection to the employment and vocations in
the unorganised sector is not by legislating separately for each
employment or vocation. This will only multiply the number of laws
when one of our goals is to simplify and reduce the number of
existing laws. It is, therefore, logical and wise to enact an
umbrella type of law for the unorganised sector which would guarantee
a minimum of protection and welfare to all workers in the unorganised
sector, and would leave it open to the Government to bring in special
laws for different employments or sub-sectors if experience indicates
the need for it, provided that the sub-sectoral laws do not take away
any of the basic rights or the access to social security that the
umbrella legislation provides. Such an arrangement will give full
respect to the federal nature of our Constitution as well as the
different needs of diverse groups of workers.
According to the NCL the social security measures for the unorganised
workers should include: healthcare, maternity and early childcare,
provident fund benefits, family benefits, amenities/benefits
including housing, drinking water, sanitation, etc., compensation for
employment injury benefits (including invalidity benefits and
survivor's or dependent's benefits), retirement and post-retirement
benefits (gratuity, pension and family pension). Besides these, there
should be schemes, either independent or in association with the
government, welfare bodies, NGOs and social organisations, for the
upgradation of skills and the education of workers, and for the
elimination of child labour and forced labour.
After holding discussions with a large number of concerned persons
and considering the recommendations of a study group on this issue,
the NLC suggested a draft of this legislation in which apex boards
for the unorganised sector workers will be created in all States by
the respective State governments. This apex board in consultation
with the State Government will create State Welfare Boards for
various categories of workers. The State Board in consultation with
district panchayats will also constitute District Boards.
In this draft the Worker Facilitation Centres (WFCs) are the local
centres of activities of the Board coordinated by the respective
District Boards. The District Board in consultation with local
panchayats will constitute them. The WFCs will work in panchayats and
areas of workers' concentration. Workers will be enrolled by the WFC
and the welfare benefits to them will also be provided by the WFCs.
The Central and State Boards will raise funds by way of contribution,
cess, assistance, grant from the government through budget allocation
or donations from employment providers, private sector, workers and
other legally permitted sources.
w
Following the submission of the report of the NLC, the Ministry of
Labour organised a National Seminar on Unorganised Sector Labour in
November 2002. This seminar set up a technical group on the
legislative aspects. According to the recommendations of the
Technical Group on Umbrella Legislation for the Unorganised Sector,
The approach of the legislation both for the Unorganised Sector and
the Agricultural workers should not merely be welfare oriented but
also provide for regulation of employment, provision of minimum
employment earnings guarantee wherever practicable, as well as a role
of the workers for proper enforcement of the law and the schemes.
Attempts must be made to ensure workers participation in formulation
and implementation of the scheme.
The role of the Central Government should be generally to provide
leadership and coordination. The scheme should be generally operated
at the State and the Union Territory levels. The Central Government
has to play an important role in the collection of funds and the
disbursement, auditing of the funds through various State Boards.
At the time of the NDA Government the Union Ministry of Labour had
circulated various revised versions of the draft of the legislation
for unorganised workers, but these left much to be desired. Meanwhile
several labour and legal activists, who had already spearheaded a
campaign for the construction workers' legal rights, formed the
National Campaign Committee for Unorganised Sector Workers with
Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer as its Chairman. This Committee had made a
representation before the NLC which attracted a lot of attention. A
critique of the NDA Government's draft by the National Campaign
Committee for unorganised Sector Workers (NCC-USW) said that
significant provisions to ensure socio-economic security to workers
suggested by the NCL as well as the Technical Committee had been
ignored in these drafts. This review said:
The Bill must clearly contain the elements of social security and
welfare that will be provided at the minimum level. Besides, the Bill
must ensure provisions for regulation of employment and minimum
guarantee of earning calculated on the principle of need based
minimum wage.
The earlier legislation based on Welfare Boards was enacted for only
one category of the unorganised sector, mainly construction workers.
But apart from the fact that these were weak laws, their
implementation has also been tardy.
In 1996, after a long delay, two important legislations were passed
by Parliament for the construction workers-the Building and
Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of
Service) Act, 1996 and the Building and Other Construction Workers
Welfare Cess Act, 1996. These legislations came only after a
12-year-long sustained campaign by the National Campaign Committee
for Construction Labour (NCC-CL) in which various central trade
unions campaigned unitedly. Among other things, these legislations
provide for a cess to be collected on all new construction activity
at the rate of one to two per cent of the total budget of the
construction being taken up. This amount has to be deposited with the
Construction Workers' Welfare Board for the many-sided welfare
activities of construction workers including pension, assistance in
case of accident, housing loan, insurance scheme, maternity benefits,
education of children etc.
These central acts have to be implemented by the governments of every
State and Union Territory. Even after almost eight years these have
been implemented only in Kerala, Tamil Nadu (which sought an
exemption and implemented its earlier law), Delhi, Pondichery, Madhya
Pradesh and Gujarat. It is clear that if the rules of these
legislations had been framed and its implementation had started in
the true spirit within almost one year of the passing of these
legislations, then during the last six years or so billions of rupees
would have become available for the welfare of workers. This rightful
share of workers, provided for them by Parliament eight years back,
has been held back from them because of avoidable delays in the
implementation of these legislations.
Keeping in view this poor record of the implementation of
legislations for the construction workers, it is important that when
a legislation is enacted for all unorganised sector workers, efforts
are also made to promote the unity of the unorganised workers so that
the legislation is implemented in the proper spirit. The hopes and
aspirations of as many as 260 million workers (as per the estimates
provided in the NLC Report) are tied up with the proposed umbrella
type legislation for the unorganised sector workers.
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