An important terrain of growing conflict and debate is between liberalisation’s agenda of labour market reform (a euphemism for removal of protections for workers under prevailing labour laws) and the demand from representatives of different contingents of the working class for extension of legal rights and protection to the ever widening unorganised sector. Epitomised in the ongoing discussion on the Unorganised Sector Workers’ Bill, the issue is of particular significance to women workers, a greater proportion of them concentrated in the unorganised sector.

The timing (in the 1990s) of the successive governments’ proposal for an ‘umbrella legislation’ for unorganised sector workers, was clearly a political tool directed at giving a mask of their concern for workers, while pushing forward on an agenda of curtailing and dismantling several existing protections for these workers under the country’s labour laws. It was widely propagated that there was need for removal of ‘labour market rigidities’ and for the ‘over privileged’ workers in the organised sector to be made to fall in line with the needs of globalisation and its advance through liberalisation and opening up of the Indian economy. Further, it was argued that since existing labour laws were protective mechanisms only for organised sector workers (the over privileged), laws for them against closures, for security of service, and of course for removing restrictions on the use of contract work for perennial production or services require to be amended, removing such protections. Such a package was then linked to a supposed concern for the ‘underprivileged’, i.e., the unorganised workers through the proposal for an umbrella legislation for them.

Lack of Will

Formulating proposals for such a combined function was set out as the task of the Second Labour Commission. It is, of course, only a partial truth that all labour laws are meant for the organised sector. For example, even as its schedules do not incorporate several segments of unorganised workers, the Minimum Wages Act is supposed to be applied to unorganised sector workers as well. The fact that it doesn’t is a comment on the lack of will to implement it as much as any other lacunae in the law. From the manner in which discussions on the Unorganised Sector Workers’ Bill have proceeded, there seems to be no change as far as that lack of will is concerned.

In such a context, it is not surprising that the negative effects of liberalisation on the employment, wages and working conditions of unorganised sector workers has received only the most cursory attention in the discussions around the proposed Bill. NSS employment data for the 1990s have already shown the tendency towards a declining share of women in informal sector employment. Of course, a large part of this decline has been caused by the precipitous fall in numbers of women in agricultural employment, even as census data show that between 1991 and 2001, there has been a major increase in proportions of women in the ‘cultivator’ or ‘peasant’ category of employment. In an era marked by ‘deindustrialisation’ or‘jobless growth’, women workers often become the first to be displaced from even poor quality and highly exploitative employment.

From the NSS data, it appears that the ever-increasing number of women displaced from agriculture and even several segments of manufacturing are now being overcrowded into beedi-making and petty retail trade, in the former as piece rated wage workers (primarily home-based), in the latter as self-employed. As is well known such overcrowding has led to declining number of workdays and lowering of incomes in the already low paying (below subsistence) segments of the unorganised sector workforce. Although the bill does talk about schemes to ensure employment, there appears to be little hope that any such scheme, which would necessarily entail some outlay by the government, would be cleared by the strategically placed agents of international finance in the Ministry of Finance and the Planning Commission. Already we have seen the process of the watering down of the Employment Guarantee Act in the course of its transition from initial conception to being tabled in parliament (to narrow its applicability to only to those who are in the infamously under enumerated below poverty line (BPL) category, in only notified areas, and to narrow the range of works to be provided, etc.). Will not the schemes in the proposed Unorganised Workers’ Bill meet the same fate?

However, looking at the third draft of the Unorganised Sector Workers’ Bill circulated by the Ministry of Labour (on 9 November 2004), it appears that several improvements have been made on the first draft, in matters of spelling out and regulation of employer employee relationships. However, once again, the third draft has sought to incorporate the distinct and very large category of agricultural workers within the ambit of this general legislation for unorganised workers. Such an inclusion would leave the vast numbers of women workers in agriculture, which still accounts for a greater proportion and overwhelming majority of the female workforce, without any actual or real recourse to protection or regulation of their working conditions. It is for this reason that central trade unions, and agricultural workers’ organisations have consistently demanded that a separate law for agricultural workers be enacted, something that even the Second Labour Commission was amenable to, but which continues to be ignored by the government. It is also surprising that even the third draft has not incorporated a specific clause on equal wages, particularly since the Equal Remuneration Act (ERA) fails to address unorganised sector workers at all (The reason for the exclusion of unorganised sector workers lies in the conception of ERA being applicable only within a given establishment, and therefore excluding inequalities across establishments from its ambit). It would seem, therefore, that the stated objective of non-discrimination in the Unorganised Workers’ Bill is too general to actually be operative.

Equal Pay for Women

Among the problems faced by women workers in the unorganised sector, an important issue is the evaluation of the value of the work performed by them. This is particularly so in cases where there is a combination of family labour and piece rates. In the home-based handloom sector for example, piece rates are calculated without any real accounting for the several functions or the actual individual labour time involved in production. Sometimes, particular functions ancilllary to the weaving process are performed by women, sometimes women share the work in weaving as well. Generally, home-based handloom weaving involves the labour of both men and women. Yet, in the calculation of official minimum wage rates, the baseline starting point for a handloom product is actually fixed with an idea of what can be produced in a single day in mind. This is then made equivalent to the minimum wages for one person involved in agricultural work, with an upward relative scale according to greater skill and complexity. In other words, through the mechanism of the piece rate, the labour time of at least two or three workers including the women is made equivalent to the amount paid for one worker in agriculture.