The Precariat a Bit Less Precarious in Mumbai

Working on Contract at Rinfra

Even as a state-owned public utility, ¹¹ Rinfra had employed contract workers for unskilled work for several decades, along with permanent (regularized) workers for skilled work. But with the 1990s liberalization reforms, ¹² the ranks of contract workers at the company swelled immensely, as the company stopped hiring regularized staff, and instead relied on contract workers for all new hires, both skilled and semi-skilled. These workers are hired through about a hundred contracting agents ¹³ as daily casual labor, though many have been continuously working for the company for decades. This arrangement ensures these workers do not technically appear as employees on Rinfra’s books and the company is absolved of all their labor responsibilities.

Given this arrangement, contract workers at Rinfra—as elsewhere—have abysmal working conditions. Although many performed skilled jobs, they were all paid the minimum wage for unskilled casual labor. These meager wages were paid irregularly, mostly once every two months while contract agents often took “unfair” cuts out of their pay packages. Contract workers also contributed to social security (the provident fund) but never received social security benefits upon leaving their jobs. While technically represented through the “official” or company union, the Bombay Electrical Workers Union (BEWU), they rarely sought union support, knowing that officials were apathetic and often colluded with the company to cheat them. Due to the hazardous nature of electrical maintenance work, worksite accidents were high, especially for workers who handled high voltage live cables and faulty transformers. Injuries and even deaths were common. The workers had no safety equipment—they handled high-voltage live cables barefoot or with flimsy footwear, and many were electrocuted, as they often had to work waist deep in water under heavy rains. There was no system to provide compensation, rehabilitation, or medical care upon injury or death.

However, in 2005, the tides turned. Shortly after the company was privatized, five thousand contract workers (more than 90 percent) at Rinfra went out on strike to demand workplace safety and accident rehabilitation reforms. The strike was triggered by the electrocution and death of a twenty-six-year-old fellow contract worker who was repairing a faulty transformer when it accidentally blew up. The worker was hospitalized in critical condition and died soon after. Fearing the possibility of a backlash, Rinfra—with tacit approval from its union, BEWU (which allegedly provided the labor)—tried to dispose of the dead body and convince the widow (with a paltry bribe) to leave town the same evening. The contract workers intercepted the funeral party midway and took possession of the dead body, convincing the widow to support their struggle. ¹⁴ Over the next four days, contract workers organized in massive numbers, largely through word of mouth. Led by militant leaders, they demanded a full enquiry into the incident, appropriate compensation for the widow, and mechanisms for future workplace safety and accident rehabilitation. They also insisted on negotiating only with the top management.

When management refused to respond, the striking workers started sabotaging expensive electrical equipment. Transmission cables disappeared, transformers malfunctioned, and electricity supply wires to residences of influential people mysteriously came undone. These stunts disrupted the power supply to key personalities, ¹⁵ such as Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan. The company was helpless in protecting its assets, which are located all around the city; and most company officials are not even aware of their exact locations, as they are often known only to the contract workers who deal with them on a daily basis. Within a few weeks, Rinfra had suffered millions of rupees worth of damaged equipment—as well as a threat to its ability to retain customers—since even though it is a monopoly, it has an obligation to ensure regular service supply or it risks being replaced.

When management refused to respond, the striking workers started sabotaging expensive electrical equipment.

When the first round of negotiations with top management failed, workers resorted to picketing and the use of violence on “scabs” hired to replace them. Management pressed criminal charges against the main leaders of the movement, which failed to stop the protests. Finally, however, fearing further unrest, the Minister of Labor intervened, agreeing to mediate between the company and the striking workers. The workers’ immediate demands were met, including a full enquiry into the death, adequate compensation for the widow, ¹⁶ and withdrawal of criminal charges against the protest leaders. In addition, systems for accident treatment, rehabilitation, and compensation, as well as zonal safety committees, ¹⁷ were instituted.

This victory became the catalyst for more demands and protests, including another demand for timely wage payments and wage increases in 2006, again accompanied by a large-scale protest. The workers developed a carefully sequenced strategy of demands, starting with the timely and regular payment of wages (by the tenth of each month instead of once every two months) followed by the demand for higher wages and paid vacation time. To bring the issue to the company’s notice, workers mounted an eight-month protest, involving work stoppages for two hours every morning and sloganeering. When they succeeded in getting monthly payments, they decided to agitate for higher wages, a much harder goal. In one interview, a contract worker leader said that aiming and winning smaller goals enabled workers to build more faith in their ability to improve conditions. Building on smaller successes had made the rank and file confident enough to aim for bigger goals.

And, finally, after succeeding with the more “achievable” goals, they pushed for the hardest one, that of getting permanent status and the extension of all statutory benefits and provisions applicable to regularized employees. When I conducted interviews in 2009-2010, their case for permanence was pending in the labor court, where it remains to this day, although in 2009, the workers received an interim order “maintaining the status quo,” which ensured that, in lieu of the labor court decision, none of the applicant workers could be dismissed or suspended from service. ¹⁸ All benefits that they had been getting to date were to be continued.

Battling BEWU

In all of these struggles, contract workers at Rinfra had to repeatedly challenge the official union (BEWU), which was either apathetic or openly hostile to their demands. Established by management ¹⁹ and made up solely of elected permanent (regularized) workers, BEWU denied contract workers any voting rights. As such, the relationship between contract and regularized workers has been adversarial, as the latter is openly contemptuous of contract workers’ “inferior” and subordinate status. The union remains threatened by the growing power and assertiveness of contract workers, who have managed to organize outside of BEWU control. BEWU goons routinely beat up and verbally abuse the contract workers’ leaders to instill fear and control.

Contract workers at Rinfra had to repeatedly challenge the official union (BEWU), which was either apathetic or openly hostile to their demands.

In their demand for higher wages, contract workers have found themselves pitted against BEWU, which the company had entrusted with periodically negotiating their wages. And colluding with the company, BEWU always settled for the official minimum wages, ²⁰ while contract workers demanded much higher rates, commensurate with their skills, particularly for those doing highly skilled jobs. So in 2006, after succeeding in getting their wages paid on time, contract workers launched fresh demands, including doubling the minimum wages recently negotiated by the official union. They also demanded paid leave, which had not been provided up to that time. But as BEWU refused to renegotiate their wages, five thousand contract workers stopped work for fifteen days, and then went directly to company management.

In pursuing these demands, contract workers united across political and skill-level differences to form a solid organizational front, holding several negotiations with management and eventually convincing it to settle with strikers for higher wages. In addition to sabotaging company equipment and disrupting power supplies, they also organized gate meetings, picketing, and sloganeering. The disruption of electricity in select parts of the city was carefully planned in advance. Their protest gained momentum by the fact that it coincided with a time when Rinfra was already under fire for sharply hiking electricity rates and was facing the wrath of political parties, consumer groups, and the media—some of which had initiated legal action.

BEWU opposed the open challenge to its power and tried its best to sabotage the workers’ efforts, making their struggle for higher wages also a struggle against the official union’s autocracy—and its dominance by the regularized workers. Ultimately, as the company was forced to renegotiate the contract workers’ wages, the union was pressured to sign the new agreement to end the standoff. In addition to significant wage increases (from 120 rupees to 238 rupees, or $1.90 to $3.80 per day), the contract workers were provided with twenty-one days of paid annual leave, which could be reimbursed if not used. The agreement was counter-signed by the Labor Commissioner.

In another key struggle, this time for social security, contract workers again had to challenge the company union. While contract workers regularly contributed to social security, receipts for their deposits were untraceable and never paid out—a common problem in India. ²¹ Without proof, the workers, of course, had no way of demanding their social security benefit payments. Since they suspected that middlemen had pocketed the receipts, the workers demanded that they receive these directly from the social security authorities themselves, ensuring that their contributions were deposited and paid back when due. They held several zonal meetings and set up a fund for the purpose, collecting contributions from each contract worker. They took a delegation to the social security headquarters in New Delhi, along with representatives of civil society groups. ²² Eventually, the state accepted their case and started issuing them receipts as proof of contribution.

In a final victory against BEWU, in 2007, the contract workers formed and registered their own, separate union, the Mumbai Electric Employees Union (MEEU). In doing so, they were generously mentored and aided by several progressive human rights groups and labor unions. To spearhead the cause of contract workers’ labor rights, this union has also instituted a permanent fight fund, financed purely from membership dues, to provide financial support to workers suspended or terminated on account of union activities. The support fund provides basic monthly subsistence to each individual in lieu of working full-time for the union.

MEEU activists claim they have dealt with five hundred cases of accidents since the union was formally recognized.

Currently MEEU is playing a crucial role in ensuring that the labor rights are implemented and the company honors its agreements, especially for accident compensation and treatment during injuries. Under company policy, injured workers need to come forward and report accidents to human resources managers to take action, but many contract workers are neither aware of this policy nor comfortable approaching human resources managers, so the contract workers union takes up their issues. MEEU activists have claimed they have dealt with five hundred cases of accidents since the union was formally recognized.

Organizing as a United Front and Tapping All Avenues of Support

In India, where political consciousness within dispossessed groups over rights and exploitation is notoriously absent, it is notable that these contract workers were not only so rapidly politicized, but also able to cross ideological and political lines to unite as a group. A fiery Rinfra contract worker leader attributes their consciousness of their rights to their cultural and family background. Most of their ancestral villages were former hotbeds of communist uprisings, especially against feudalism and landlordism, and continue to be communist strongholds. Most Rinfra contract worker leaders have grounding in communist student politics. In Mumbai, especially since the mid-1990s, local leftist groups have also provided evening classes promoting rights-consciousness among many workers, advising them on labor legislation and policies, and specific remedies available to contract labor, all of which has raised their awareness levels.

Another widespread enabling factor is the cultural homogeneity of Rinfra contract workers. Most contract workers here are typically hired through family and kin networks. Contractors and older workers brought their fellow villagers, cousins, relatives, and others through known references. Thus, most contractors and workers at Rinfra are from a single region, the Nalgonda district of Andhra Pradesh. Most of them belong to families of the dalit (untouchable) caste, landless laborers, and marginal farmers. Thus, language, caste, and kin affiliations have enabled their solidarity and unionization.

They also inhabit close living and recreational spaces. New migrant contract workers often join single older migrant workers and share their living quarters (usually a single room). Most also form groups and live in the same neighborhoods, even with the same families. Through these close networks, workers were easily and rapidly mobilized for strikes and collective action even under very short notice.

Understanding that the company could be subject to government intervention, [workers] were able to avail themselves of the Labor Minister’s office to arbitrate their demands.

Also important at Rinfra was the ability of contract workers to use all possible spaces within the state for their own protection and to strengthen their demands. Understanding that, as a state-regulated monopoly, the company could be subject to government intervention, they were able to avail themselves of the Labor Minister’s office to arbitrate their demands for workplace health and safety, and compensation; win the support of the labor court and Labor Commissioner’s office in their struggle for higher wages; and access the Department of Social Security (provident fund) to secure the direct receipt of deposits. They continue to access labor courts for their efforts to gain permanent status and to challenge the company when vociferous contract worker leaders are suspended or terminated under charges of “rioting.” ²³

Not the Whole Story

Finally, of course, it must be emphasized that the company operates as a monopoly, with a large captive market. Therefore, the increased costs stemming from contract worker demands were not borne by the company, but rather passed on to its 2.8 million consumers. ²⁴ With full control over the market, it has frequently raised electricity rates, which increased by 60 percent from 2005, when the company was privatized, to 2010. In addition, despite the increased costs of contract workers, the company’s total wage-and-benefit costs are actually falling, as permanent workers retire and their positions are filled by additional contract workers. Even with increased wages and benefits, a contract worker makes less than a third of the wages of a permanent worker. This no doubt explains why the company so steadily resisted the demand for permanent worker status.

However, while the cost–benefit factors may be unique to monopoly corporations, it is important to note that since the 1990 reforms, contract workers in formal sector corporations are increasingly filling up highly skilled positions previously filled by regularized workers. Thus, contract workers have increasingly become critical to company operations and are not easily replaced. At Rinfra, for example, when contract workers made a demand for safety boots, uniforms, raincoats, and such items necessary for preventing accidents, the company readily agreed, supplying them with safety gear and high-quality equipment identical to that of permanent workers. It stated that if BEWU had made these demands earlier, they would have been readily extended. Also, because much of the company’s operational assets, such as transformers and cables, are widely dispersed in the city with locations known only to contract workers, the company could not easily replace them with scabs when they went on strike. These assets were also exceedingly vulnerable to strategic attack and sabotage.

Given the massive increases in contract workers throughout the global South, what lessons does this history offer such workers? First, organizing autonomously, as contract workers in a single workplace, is possible. Inadequate representation by company unions need not stand in the way of self-organizing for decent wages, benefits, and working conditions. Second, the fact that the contract workers centered so many of their demands around health and safety issues, not only following the death and cover-up of the initial worker but also thereafter, may also be significant, especially considering that so many work in dangerous conditions. Highlighting these dangers holds the potential of attracting significant global as well as national attention. Given the fact that privatization, and the ability to hire a more “flexible workforce,” is becoming the new normal in almost every region, north and south, these are clearly lessons worth taking.