Happy Labour Day. Now, About Those Workers.
So, About Those Workers. You Know, The Ones Who Make Everything You Own. Happy Labour Day!
Every year, on May 1st, we post a red fist emoji and move on with our lives. Maybe we share an infographic. Maybe we say something vague like “respect workers.” Then we head out to buy something that was definitely assembled by someone barely earning 12,000 a month for a family of four. I do it too.
But this year, this especially chaotic, tear-gas flavoured year — I find it genuinely hard to scroll past it. Because only a few weeks ago, in Noida, police were shoving tear gas shells at factory workers who had been protesting for four straight days. Vehicles torched, stones pelted. It sounds like the plot of some dystopian film like Hunger Games, but it isn’t. And the workers’ demands? Buckle up, because they are absolutely radical. They want a minimum monthly wage of 20,000 and here’s the really outrageous bit – they want to work eight hours a day, not twelve.
Eight hours? The audacity!
The difference of 6,000 rupees between what a worker attains in Uttar Pradesh and what is attained in Haryana, has become the sharpest symbol of the inequality driving the unrest. Same hands, same factories, same exhaustion, different state line, wildly different pay cheque. It makes perfect sense. Very logical system we’ve built here.
Now, in fairness, Haryana had a moment of generosity. The government ordered a 35 percent increase in the minimum wage after workers from Haryana protested too. So basically the playbook was to protest until someone hurled tear gas at you, then maybe you got a raise.
But, here’s the thing. Last year’s survey reveals that only 23.6 percent of the country’s workers make a regular wage. The rest are “self-employed”, which, let’s face it, is more polite than “selling things on the pavement,” or casual labourers who get paid as soon as they can. This is the engine of the fifth-largest economy in the world. A very… particular engine.
And the new Labour Codes are not exactly in the crates of people they hit. Four shiny new ones that have all but dissolved decades of worker protections into something much more thin. Contract workers such as those at Indian Oil work 12-hour days, get paid for eight, get two days off a month, and may still be waiting to receive wages that are months late. One worker quoted in a news report said, “My pay gets exhausted in just 10 days.” Ten days. Imagine that.
In February, roughly 300 million workers joined a national Bharat Bandh – a number so large it makes me take a deep breath. Three hundred million people. That is not a protest. That is essentially a country within a country saying, collectively, enough.
Did it lead to meaningful dialogue? Reader, you know the answer.
So here we are, May 1st, the day we decided to put aside to remember that workers are real people and not just furniture in the economy. We’ll post things. Companies will send out press releases about their “commitment to fair employment practices.” Someone in HR will send a LinkedIn update. And somewhere in Noida, a man who made the shoes you wear to work every day will clock in for his twelfth hour, because that’s just how Fridays go.
Happy Labour Day, do something with it.
