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Unit 5: Unemployment in India

3.6 to 3.2 and the actual numbers have declined from 44,22,000 to 39,25,000. A considerable Notes
section of the urban middle class women have lost jobs or have had to take up voluntary
retirement schemes (VRS). The public sector units targeting women for VRS include Life
Insurance Corporation of India, Coal India Limited and banks amongst others. These
educated women after losing their jobs have taken up the roles of housewives, which in
turn has affected the employment of women in the domestic service.
The IT industry has been touted as the panacea for all the problems in India. It is considered
to open up avenues in favour of women. However, there is data to show that women
professionals are still a minority in this sector with a clear trend towards clustering at the
lower ends of the job leading to feminization of service centres. In the year 2000, 5,22,250
people were employed. 79% of the software professionals were men and 21% were women.

Education and healthcare are increasingly being privatized. These sectors employ large
numbers of women for low wages with no social security. Moolchand hospital, a large
private hospital in New Delhi, intimidated women workers and forced many of them to
sign a contract that denied them the right to engage in any trade union activities and to
accept consolidated pay. Those who refused to sign and went on strike were dismissed on
framed up charges. The challenges for women workers in these sectors are multi-fold and
any resistance is met with force by the employers in complicity with the police and the
state. In this context it is also appropriate to mention that established trade unions do not
often give priority to the problems of women workers. For example in the case of sexual
harassment of a nurse in the Lala Ram Swarup TB hospital of New Delhi, the employees’
union was not prepared to take up the case. It was only after that nurse went on a hunger
strike and women’s’ organizations intervened that the union had to take a stand.
‘What is to be done’– Organising the Unorganised

The existing legislation does not protect the vast majority of the women workers in the
country. The Factories Act, 1948 covers working conditions, health and safety, basic
amenities like toilets, crèches, working hours, etc. but does not apply to work places with
fewer than 10 workers using power driven machinery or less than 20 workers without
such machinery. Employees State Insurance Act, 1948 providing for sickness, accident and
maternity benefits at the ground level does not apply to the vast majority of women
workers. The Employers by sub-contracting production and dividing the establishment
into small units are able to evade all the existing laws. The Contract Labour Act, 1971 has
been flouted by not just the private enterprises but the Government itself by the
employment of contract labour for work of perennial nature. The Industrial Disputes Act
of 1947 prevents arbitrary closure of industrial establishments and provides redress for
workers dismissed for participation in trade union activities. This act does not apply to
workers in the informal sector. Without the protection that this act provides (at least in
theory) workers in the informal sector can be victimized or dismissed for participating in
union activities. There are many obstacles to organizing women in the informal sector.
Women with the dual burden of working long hours in poor working conditions on the
one hand and raising children and the domestic chores on the other find it hard to come to
meetings. The Korean Women Workers Association United and Korean Women’s Trade
Union organized an international workshop in 2000 entitled “Perspectives and Solidarity
of Women’s Trade Union Movement”. There were extensive discussions on strategies to
organize informal and part time workers. One of the strategies that were discussed was to
encourage union activists to visit the women at their workplaces and start active campaigns
to inform women about their rights. One example is that of the Hong Kong union which
regularly visited janitors (domestic workers) working in housing complexes. Every visit
was made by 2 activists because one had to do the work in place of the worker who was
Contd...

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