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Collective Bargaining

Poornima Chikarmane, KKPK, India

 

Hamal Panchayat

It was the year 1956, when the hamals (head loaders) of Pune first struck work for 8 days to demand a raise in wages. “kata band kara” (boycott the weighing scale) was the unifying slogan and “kata band dukan band”(no weighing scale no shop/business) was the outcome. Excluded from the purview of the Shops and Establishments Act, 1948 hamals were not assured minimum wages; their hours of work were not regulated and they had no legal recourse under the Act. The shops, the warehouses, the markets could not function without them and all commercial activity ground to a halt. The hamals were collectively invited to the negotiating table and a settlement was reached- higher piece rate service charges for different commodities to be reviewed every three years. The hamals demanded a written agreement, signed by both parties and the traders refused to sign on the dotted line. The stalemate continued till the then Collector (Administrative head of the district) intervened. He wrote down the substance of the settlement in the presence of both parties and affixed his signature to it, in his capacity as the administrative head of the district.  Neither of the parties signed the document but a record was created and a new practice established as precedent. From then on it was business as usual with a difference. The employer-employee relationship is often visualised in terms of polarities, positing the employer and employee in adversarial roles. In this case both parties recognised the strength of the other and sought to define their ongoing relationships as mutually interdependent and beneficial long term partnerships that needed to be maintained and nurtured and that they had common interests in maintaining and enhancing business growth.

They could have chosen otherwise. The hamals based on their capacity to paralyse commerce could have chosen to invoke the Industrial Disputes Act to demand “employee” status and prolong the imbroglio, just as the traders could have used their greater financial muscle to “break” the collectivisation of labour. Both bargained with a view to reaching an agreement keeping aside the ambiguous and contentious issue of determining “employer-employee” status.  

Although hamals operate from within the trading establishments, they are not paid by the shop owners and are therefore not their employees. They load and unload, fetch and carry for various consumers and vendors and are paid for the sale of their labour. The relationship between the establishment owner and the hamal is in the nature of “permission” to operate from the establishment. The hamals did not seek to define their relationship with the traders. On the contrary they asserted “We own our backs. No one owns us. We cannot be compelled to work”.  

The unionisation of hamals also brought in another change, that of the union assigning hamals to the establishments. Violation of this tenet by the employers was rare because of the threat of “kata band”.   

The working conditions at the time were horrific………………………..

At the goods yard at the railway station………

Hamals had to work in the closed, dark railway containers, jostling each other in the limited space, inhaling cement dust and chemical fumes and choking on on them; and tripping on the uneven floors. There was no rest room, no toilets and not even drinking water. They paid a “handewali bai” (water women) to supply drinking water to them through the working day. 		 At the grocery market………… enormous loads of jaggery had to be carried on their backs. There being few sugar processing factories at the time all the jaggery was brought to the city. Often the jaggery was hot and dripping, and burnt their backs through the sacks that were meant to protect them.
The vegetable and fruit markets operated at night and the average weight carried was 100 kg. and still is for the most part, despite the ILO Convention that requires it to be less than 40 kg.

The condition of the women workers was even more abysmal………mostly Dalits, they were not paid wages by anyone. They swept the establishment and collected the spilled grain which they had rights to and constituted their “wages”.

 The modes of communication between union members were the information boards outside the larger warehouses around which the members could congregate. Typically hamals worked in tolis or gangs cemented by kinship or natal village ties. This enabled the strengthening of the network.  

There were similar struggles afoot in Bombay as well, P. D’Mello had organised the dock workers and porters while Alvarez tried to organise the loaders at the railway station. The demand for legislative protection became more strident and in response to the pressure the Maharashtra government set up a committee to study the conditions of work of hamals.

What followed was the enactment of the Hamal Mathadi and Other Unprotected Manual Workers (Regulation of Employment and Welfare) Act, 1969, a historic and radical piece of legislation that was specifically intended to protect the thousands of labouring manual workers in insecure employments across the state. The salient features of the Act are outlined below.

Scope

The Act purports to regulate the employment of unprotected manual workers such as Hamal, Mathadi etc., to make better provision for their terms and conditions of employment, to provide for health and safety measures where such employments require these measures; to make provision for ensuring an adequate supply to, and full and proper utilisation of, such workers in such employments to prevent unavoidable unemployment; for these and similar purposes, to provide for the establishment of boards in respect of these employments in the different areas of the state.

Definition of Worker

The Mathadi Act defines the category of ‘unprotected worker’ as a ‘manual worker who is engaged or to be engaged in any scheduled employment’. It further defines worker as, “any person who is engaged directly or through any agency, whether for wages or not, to do manual work in any scheduled employment and, includes any person not employed by any employer or a contractor, but working with the permission of, or under agreement with the employer or contractor; but does not include members of an employer’s family” (italics are by the author).

For example a ‘hamal’ who carries goods purchased by a customer from the establishment to the transport vehicle is paid by the customer or by the employer who recovers it from the customer.

Definition of “work”

The ‘nature of work’ as defined by the Mathadi Act specifies operations and includes ‘catching, collecting, sorting, packing, unpacking, loading, unloading, weighing, measuring, stacking, carrying, stitching, cleaning, filling or any such other work including work preparatory or incidental to such operations’ (italics are by the author).  

Application

The Act applies to a list of scheduled employments specified in the Act and carried out in industries, factories, various commodity markets, shops and other establishments notified by the government in specific geographical areas. Those covered at present include grocery, iron and steel, railway yards and goods sheds, agricultural produce, timber, chemicals and fertilisers, goods transport, fishing, salt pans, metals (excluding iron and steel) and paper in all (but one) the districts of Maharashtra state.

The Act provides for inclusion of other employments in the schedule with suitable modifications as may be specified in the notification, if there is a demand from either the employers or the workers. Inclusion of employments is within the purview of the State Advisory Board.

Key Provisions

  i.            Constitution of an Autonomous Statutory Board to compulsorily register workers and employers

Engagement of unregistered workers by unregistered employers is prohibited under the Act

There is also provision for multiple Boards for different markets/trades or single board in a geographical region. The single Board pattern is more common because it reduces administrative costs.

Entry into the sub-sector is regulated by the Board

  ii.            Tripartite structure with equal representation of the employers/traders associations, the trade unions of employees and the State. Members of both the Boards are nominated by the Maharashtra Government.

·        Advisory Body at State Level

The Advisory Board is chaired by a Cabinet Minister with the State Labour Secretary as Member Secretary and comprises Members of the Legislative Assembly, Representatives of Employers Associations and Trade Unions of workers in equal proportion.

·        Local Boards

Local Boards are chaired by the Labour Commissioner/Addl. Labour Commissioner. There is also special provision for a one man Board consisting of the Labour Commissioner/Addl. Labour Commissioner. Today, structurally, the tripartite mechanism does not operate in the local Boards. All the Boards are being run as one man Boards with the Government dragging its feet on the nomination of members. The State has no powers to interfere in the functioning because the Boards are autonomous. Functionally, such pressure that the unions exert is the only check on the unilateral powers enjoyed by the administrators.

 iii.            The Board functions as the “employer” only in respect of the Payment of Wages Act and the Workers Compensation Act

 iv.            Disbursal of wages:

Wages are deposited with the Board by the employers along with the levy. All transactions (collection and disbursal) are by effected by cheque. The Board deducts the workers contribution and makes the wage payment to the worker.

v.            Payment of levy by employers:

The levy includes the employers’ contribution towards provident fund, paid leave, gratuity and other statutory benefits.

The rate of levy payable by the employers also varies from district to district and is negotiated depending on the bargaining strength of workers and employers within the statutory limit of 50% of the wages. The minimum levy across the State today is 25 % while the highest is at 48 % at the Jawaharlal Nehru Port trust. The proportion in which the levy is distributed across benefits also differs in each Board. 

The present rate for Pune is 30 per cent. This means that if a worker earns Rs.100 on a given day, the employer has to deposit a sum of Rs.130 with the Mathadi Board. The 30 per cent is distributed between employers’ contribution to provident fund (12 per cent), Gratuity (7 per cent), Paid leave (5 per cent), holidays (5 per cent), Diwali ‘bohari’ (40 per cent), compensation (medical and insurance 3 per cent) and administration (2 per cent).

vi. Multiple employers:

Since traders do not require a constant number of workers, the Act allows for multiple employers and seasonal and casual work 

 vii.   Payment on basis of work done (piece rate payment)

Wage rates (daily, monthly or piece rates) are determined by negotiations between the trade union and the employers. This allows for variability in wages according to diversities in each commodity market.

 viii.  Administration costs of the Board are defrayed through the levy payable by the employers. There is no absolutely financial burden on the government. 

 ix.  Although the Act does provide for determination of wages, wage rates are negotiated between the trade unions and the employers associations and are sometimes higher than the prescribed minimum wage. Today there are written wage agreements that are printed and circulated. A Grievance Committee constituted jointly by the union and the employers associations is suo moto part of the agreement.  

Judicial Resolution

The Mathadi Act (as it is called) was applied to the Pune region in 1974 and the traders moved court. The due process of law is long and arduous and it was 1980 by the time the Hon. Supreme Court of India ruled in favour of the workers.  

Other Legislations that have a bearing on the implementation of the Mathadi Act and the collective bargaining process  

Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970

Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee Act, 1963 

Non-statutory private board in Pune

In the three decades since its enactment, the Act has greatly benefited the workers registered under it. Till March 1995, 29 Boards had been established in the state with 1,62,838 registered workers and 53,086 registered employers (Hamal Mapadi Varta, 1995). Other states have tried to emulate the Act with lesser degree of success. Even within Maharashtra, the efficacy of the Act is directly proportional to the organised bargaining strength of the workers. The implementation has been difficult in districts where the trade unions have been weak.  

Last stage is judicial resolution (labour court or arbitration). 

Confrontation Choices  

Hamal Panchayat

Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat

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