The Labour Side of the Story: Informalisation and New Forms of Mobilisation of Kerala’s Women Workers

Introduction

In the globalising circuit of capital, little attention has been paid to the labour side of the story, both at academic and policy levels. Millions of workers in Asia make a living at different points of this global circuit of capital. This also points to the trajectory of development and labour and the ways in which labour struggles developed, post the 1980s in particular, as they did in India. There are few possibilities of the ‘traditional industrial working class’ emerging while people are forced to access capitalist labour in some form or the other for their survival. This process involves displacement, dispossession and depriving them in various ways of their common resources, whether it is land, forests, skills and knowledge, and with tertiary labour expanding, in particular through women’s participation. In this process, the social cost of labour falls on individual workers, as employers do not bear costs of health, unemployment and by bringing in new labour codes and regimes, to make huge profits. Neoliberal sweatshops are characterised by informalisation of labour, vulnerability, lack of labour security and stable work-based identity, low wages, lack of basic facilities, lack of individual and collective rights. Labour laws or regulations covering workers are limited and workers do not have the power or institutional tools to protect themselves. This process is also highly gendered. Workers are also fragmented, depriving them of the power and means to protect themselves. Hence worker’s struggles are also no longer following the usual model of working class mobilisation. They are emerging more as social movements of the working poor in diverse forms, in neighbourhoods, in urban centres—a contrast to the tripartite industrial working class, trade unions (institutionalised labour) and worker-based political parties—looked upon almost as the ‘universal’ model.

State, Capital and Changing Labour Movement

The post-liberalisation period in India saw shifts in the labour landscape. These shifts included privatisation, deregulation, closure of public sector industries and sunset industries, the base of trade unions in the formal sector and the growth of high technology-driven industries owned by transnational corporations. Its key features were contract work and informalisation through subcontracting and casualisation of labour. The 1980s saw widespread industrial strikes and unrest in the public and private sectors in the face of changing industrial relations. More decentralised modes of bargaining and also newer forms of unions in major industrial towns such as Bombay (Mumbai), Chennai and so on began to emerge at the end of the 1980s. Diverse regional labour management arrangements too arose. These led to a decline in the strength of the traditional political party-affiliated trade unions and the opening of spaces for new forms of unions in the informal unorganised sector (Mohanty, 2009). Studies pointed to the possibilities of organising across ideologically divided labour constituencies (George & Sinha, 2017) and 1982–2003 saw newer organisations such as the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), All India Central Council of Trade Unions (AICCTU) and the Labour Progressive Federation (LPF), representing then the regional labour constituencies of political parties and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Varied unionisation among permanent (in West Bengal) and contractual labour (in Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi) was also noted.

The 1980–1990s impact of globalisation saw changes in relations between state, capital and labour, essentially due to the withdrawal of the state from its redistributive role, the enactment of increasing repressive labour policies, struggles of workers and the weakening of labour movements relations with Left governments and parties. At the same time, the working class movement responded by building broader coalitions and partnerships to impact social policy such as the Committee of Public Sector Trade Unions (CPSTU), a Joint Action Front of the Hind Mazdoor Sabha (HMS), All India Trade Union Council (AITUC) and the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) located in Bengaluru (Sundar, 2006). A coordination committee of labour unions at the sector levels and platform for the organised, unorganised and agricultural labour to fight privatisation and anti-labour policies was also forged. Post the 1990s, there were all-India strikes almost every year. Unaffiliated trade unions also formed a federation of New Trade Union Initiatives (NTUI) at the enterprise levels, challenging product market competition as an argument to cut down costs (Mohanty, 2009). Conflict of interests between unorganised and organised workers in this federation was cited by a study (Roy Chowdhury, 2003), and actions were directed more at policy changes and state action. A denial of trade union rights and drive for labour flexibility through contract labour were the main reasons for labour struggles and organisation in the post-reform period (Sundar, 2006). Resisting anti-labour measures such as retrenchment and Voluntary Retirement Schemes at the micro-level were less successful (Hensman, 2001). Overall in the labour movement, there was a shift in emphasis to social security and labour welfare, a recognition of skill-based work opportunities and so on. Firm-level struggles extended to automobiles, aviation, electronics, food products, garments—in short, sectors exposed to global market fluctuations. Outsourcing of production also led to the entry of diverse socio-political and religious institutions in the mediation between capital and labour in the post-reform period in recruiting, controlling, managing labour, as seen in Kerala (Neethi, 2014). The unorganised sector worker’s associations with regional and global affiliates, emerged as a strong lobby and movement, leading to the Unorganised Sector Worker’s Social Security Bill enacted in 2008 as law.

Liberalisation and the Enterprising-Self

A study of retail shopping malls in Kolkata highlights how the notion of a self-governing citizen and the ‘enterprising-self’ extended to labour and how this shapes individual subjectivities. Workers seek individualised responses and personalised strategies to structural problems of the work place and economy, negating the role of state in public policy. A limited number of studies exist on individual identity of such workers, subjectivity, social and political perceptions as part of neoliberalism and enterprise culture (Goptu, 2009).

Social Protection, Shift in the Politics of Labour in Kerala

Historically, in the context of Kerala, mobilisation, electoral and mass struggles, and a broad-based alliance of poor peasants, agricultural labour and workers collectively merged into a political constituency. This combined with state-led redistributive programmes, land reforms and formalisation of labour relations provided the basis for Kerala agrarian transition and protective labour legislation. This was evident in traditional industries such as the agro-processing coir and cashew industry in the 1970s where issues such as mechanisation and decentralisation of production, expansion of public and cooperative sectors, minimum wage law, statutory bonuses in industry, institutionalising collective bargaining were taken up. Later, comprehensive welfare measures were extended to agricultural workers and to the informal sector work such as construction, beedi manufacture, fisherfolk, headload workers, public distribution (food), healthcare and education as part of ‘social development’. A decline in militancy and state-mediated solutions to problems in the last decade was evident in the historically volatile Kuttanad which witnessed only two major actions by the Kerala State Karshaka Thozhilali Union (KSKTU) located in the Palghat areas in 1982 and 1997 (Velayudhan, 2016). Despite this, union membership did not decline. The coir workers in Alappuzha in the face of the relocation of traditional industries to low-wage areas in Tamil Nadu settled for a comprehensive restructuring plan involving price deregulation, mechanisation and the extension of the cooperative sector and skill development (Velayudhan, 2016).

Welfare funds, which the toddy tappers enjoyed only since 1969 as part of their role in early radicalisation, were extended in 1977 in the form of Kerala Labour Welfare Fund, to workers in plantations, small factories, shops, cooperative institutions. These extensions took place in a changed political environment that saw a split in trade unions along political lines leading to unionisation rivalries especially in the informal sector. Public policy in support of the poor arose in the 1980s in the form of welfare funds covering headload workers (located in urban areas), fish workers, artisans, handloom and motor transport workers, clerks working with lawyers, and also in sectors such as the coir and cashew industry where women workers predominated. In the 1990s, seven more welfare funds were added in the form of collective care arrangements which was essentially an institutional model of collective contributions made by workers, employers and the state, ensuring some social security at the end of a working life. Where a welfare fund did not provide old-age security, pension fund allocations were made in the budget itself.

However, a majority of informal sector workers, women in particular, still remained outside welfare protection. Where unions played a role in the entry into the labour market, the employers sometimes colluded with unions to restrict the number of registered workers with a section of unregistered workers who were excluded from welfare funds (Kannan, 2002).

With the institutionalisation of major trade unions as political entities, other forms of organisations began to emerge from the 1980s in Kerala. This led to a range of localised discourses within these new social and cultural organisations—NGOs, women’s collectives, cooperatives, institutions of labour mediations—even as the meta narrative shifted. The change pointed to a shift in the politics of labour and the language of class. Since the People’s Planning Campaign for democratic decentralisation from the mid-1990s, led by the Left, CPI-M in particular, agency moved away from trade unions to a plurality of organisations serving a range of objectives but still linked to local governance. There was a shift from exclusive collective bargaining by workers to a collective social activity, seen, for example, in Kudumbashree, in neighbourhood groups such as Ayalkootam, MNREGA forums and other forms of associational activities. Identities shifted beyond that of workers to citizens, involving a range of rights for women or as governmental categories such as Scheduled Caste, with the neighbourhood and the local as an axis. Caste and community forums were transformed, playing a more modern social and political role in the lives of workers, union members, party activists and office bearers, thus impacting political mobilisation and shaping multiple identities of workers, their life worlds and aspirations. The sole emphasis on class was replaced by a governmental discourse on development, initiated by the People’s Planning Campaign in the mid-1990s, with notions of ‘development, self-reliance, individual capacities, collective local response and empowerment to address opportunities and challenges’ (Velayudhan, 2016).

Studies have suggested the links made between the local and the global by extending the focus of cross-border production circuits to hinterlands within a nation. A secondary informal circuit was conceptualised to argue how an informal sector coexisted with the formal sector and contributed to a global market. A study of the cashew nut processing industry in Kerala has pointed to a network of clandestine home-based cashew processors, illustrating the less visible local nodes of the global cashew circuit. Also seen are the limited options and choices before informal workers because of their gender, health, age and financial liabilities (Kuzhiparambil, 2016). Few studies have looked at the conditions of labour and gender relations in commodity chains such as the one in the knitwear industry in Tiruppur (Heyer, 2012). Others have argued that sites such as the home need to be considered in terms of their role in shaping the dynamics of the chain and studies on circuits need to go beyond production units (Kuzhiparambil, 2016).

The retail sector has been cited as a booming sector by studies and Calicut has been listed among the 50 leading cities of the organised retail boom in India. Workers in the retail sector draw a low income, have minimal education and see many low-skilled workers seeking employment. Few studies on the political economy of space address the process of urbanisation and the spatiality of labour and women’s work. In Kozhikode, for example, labour came from the peripheries of the city or when the city expanded. Then workers were forced to move out of the city to newly formed working class settlements, and many were pushed out of their land to rented accommodation, into areas resembling working class ghettos. Now the new upper middle class, the Gulf migrants, occupied the city spaces. These new spaces of consumption also became the new spaces of labour. Some women workers came from nearby districts such as Idukki, according to the sales girls who live in hostels provided by employers of Kalyan Silks and Silky Mall (Jenny, 2012).

Women began to move into the textile retail sector from the 1990s onwards, replacing the men who left for daily wage work which was more remunerative. The market trend also favoured women workers as they target female customers. A study of the textile sales sector in a Thiruvananthapuram corporation ¹ observed that in the three different categories of shops that were studied, 90 per cent of the sample of women workers interviewed in one category belonged to the Other Backward Caste (OBC) community and 10 per cent to the Nair community. Over 90 per cent belonged were in the 18–22-year age group and the rest were in the 22–25-year age group. Nearly 70 per cent were educated up to Senior School Level Certificate (SSLC), 20 per cent to Pre-degree Course (PDC) and 10 per cent were not educated even to the SSLC level. Twenty per cent were Tamil-speaking and all were unmarried coming from an average family size of 10 members. Ten per cent of the workers earned salary above ₹2,000; about 40 per cent received wages between ₹1,000 and ₹2,000, and 50 per cent earned below ₹1,000 per month. The average years of work stood at 2.5 years. ²

In another category, 90 per cent of sample workers were dominant caste Nair; 10 per cent were Backward Caste Ezhavas; a majority were in the 18–22-year age group; 40 per cent were educated above SSLC; 30 per cent below SSLC and 10 per cent had a PDC and above. All were unmarried and received wages below ₹2,000 per month. The average service period stood at 3.5 years. The average family size stood at 11 members. In the third category of shops studied, 30 per cent were Christian; 10 per cent were Muslim and the rest belonged to the OBC caste, Nair and Scheduled Caste; 40 per cent were below 18 years of age, 40 per cent were in the 18–22 years bracket and 20 per cent above 22 years of age; 50 per cent had studies below the SSLC level; 20 per cent were above the SSLC level; 30 per cent had studies till PDC levels; 80 per cent were unmarried; 20 per cent married and with an average family size of nine. About 50 per cent received a monthly salary above ₹1,000 and the rest received below ₹1,000 as a monthly salary. The average period of service was 2.3 years. ³

Among all the three categories of shops, 40 per cent of the sample of women workers saved little and mostly in gold; 16.6 per cent saved through chitti (chit fund companies); 6.6 per cent had postal savings and 3 per cent had more than one form of savings. Women worked longer hours than male workers, earned lower wages, had fewer toilet facilities and breaks than men and travelled, mostly by bus, longer distance than men for work. Over 75 per cent women stayed in rented houses, 8 per cent stayed in town houses and 7 per cent stayed in houses of relatives. Most wished to continue working and none who had quit working found another job. Over 86 per cent got their jobs through contacts while 13 per cent got employment through advertisements. When the workers signed up, no contract or employment orders were signed. The women interviewed were insecure not only about their jobs but also about life in general. Families too, although aware of the insecure work conditions of their girls and the sexual harassment they faced during travel, were generally insensitive and even scolded them for returning late from work. ⁴

Women Organising

The 1990s saw a shift in the nature of the Left women’s organisation and movements in Kerala. These were dominated by the working class in the coir and cashew sector where women dominated. Agrarian labour began to transform from the mid-1990s onwards. With the democratic decentralisation of local governance and the emergence of newer forms of collectives, new local women’s leadership emerged. This period saw elected Panchayat members who came from varied backgrounds, literacy movements, youth movements and even educated women from political party families. Fewer women from the Left women’s organisation were put up as candidates for local bodies elections, pointing to patriarchal biases within political formations (Velayudhan, 2000). This process was integral to the shift in politics of labour—from a sole focus on class to a wide range of objectives, involving collectives, focussing on the local. Given this context, the earlier organic link of organised labour and the trade unions with the local (for example., ward committees) and civic issues did not prevail anymore.

The 1990s also witnessed new social movements of dalits and tribal masses and the emergence of a range of issue-based women’s groups that began to question the nature of development and lack of inclusive growth, despite many positive human development indicators. Besides, new social movements, such as the Chengara land struggle, were in conflict with some existing trade unions. It was only post 2003–2004 that civil society groups, including women’s groups, began to engage with local governance institutions. Labour itself remained an area of lesser concern, although there was a proliferation of studies on women’s work in Kerala since those years.

Among the early forms of organisation of informal sector women workers was Penkoottu, a women worker’s collective, formed as early as 2005 in Kozhikode when men working in the shopping complexes began to be replaced by women workers and sales women from small shops at Mittayitheruvu (Kozhikode). These women got together to discuss their everyday concerns. P. Viji, Penkottu’s leader and secretary, had earlier worked with Anweshi, a feminist organisation in Calicut, recalled that the Asangaditha Meghala Thozhilali Union (Unorganised Workers’ Union) was formed around the dialogues they held on the Unorganised Sector Social Security Bill. At that time, a woman worker intervened to say that she did not know what was being discussed.

This gave rise to the struggle for the right to toilet/urinate, Moothrapura Samaram, literally the struggle to urinate and Irrikal Samaram, struggle to sit. A group of about 25 women working on SM Street and Mittai Theravu in Calicut formed Penkootu. ‘On International Women’s Day in 2014, a group of us began to agitate for the right to sit. That day, we took out a procession in Kozhikode holding chairs,’ said 44-year-old Viji. She said they got to know about the workers’ plight when Penkoottu intervened after 30 women working at the Coupon Mall, a textile outlet in Kozhikode, lost their jobs. While the agitation ended on May Day that year, Viji said it took much longer to bring the issue into focus. ‘We approached trade unions to take up the cause of the saleswomen, but they were reluctant. They focussed on men and wanted these women to take up memberships with their unions as a precondition for taking up their issues.‘ From 2014 onwards, the union sent representations to the state government and the Kerala State Women’s Commission demanding better working conditions, including the right to sit for salespersons in shops. Preethi Kumar, aged 31, who worked as a saleswoman in Kozhikode, said ‘Standing for long hours would leave many with swollen legs and knee pains’. There were other problems too. She said,

We usually had one toilet reserved for us in a big shopping complex and it took a while to get there. Since we couldn’t take too many breaks and couldn’t be away for too long, we usually didn’t drink water and so simply avoided going to the toilet.

—The Indian Express, 2018

Washerwomen had been evicted from Muthalakkulam in Kozhikode 21 years ago. Although they had been promised that they would be provided appropriate housing even today they live in a dilapidated school building in West Hill. Further adding to their misery, they do not even have proper toilet facilities there. The march led by Penkoottu Secretary, Viji, warned the authorities of more protests if the problems of these women were not solved. A saleswoman who was dismissed from a popular textile outlet in Kozhikode, without following proper procedures, too joined the protest demanding justice. The strike was organised by the Asanghatita Meghala Thozhilali Union [AMTU] (The Indian Express, 2018).

In 2010, the AMTU was formed under Penkoottu to ensure the registration of the labourers and to address the more political issues faced by women. Although the formal registration process of AMTU was initiated in 2013, it was sanctioned in 2016. AMTU was instrumental in the fight for proper toilets on SM Street and other parts of the city, though the victory was only marginal. It later spearheaded the ‘Right to Sit’ campaign across the state by women working in textile shops.

The women on strike demanded humane and fair working conditions. Pointing to their conditions of work, the strike was referred to as a Struggle to Sit in January 1914, a demand for the right to sit denied to them throughout their 10–12-hour working period. This strike arose when the management of a Kalyan Sari showroom in Thrissur decided to transfer six women sales attendants. These workers were earlier prevented from entering the building on and were told that they had been transferred to distant places, to showrooms owned by the well-known Kalyan group of companies. All six women were vocal and articulate and had led other workers in the showroom to organise and raise demands for fair working conditions. The management’s action was clearly aimed at attacking the workers’ right to organise themselves and assert their rights. They began a sit-in outside the showroom. Many women workers of the showroom, including the six who were transferred, had joined AMTU. Apart from fighting for the ‘right to sit’, the AMTU has taken up unfair labour practices that were common across the sector. These included limited toilet breaks, severe monetary deductions from wages for any extra breaks (for example, out of a total salary of ₹5,000–7,500 per month, deductions could amount to ₹1,500–3,000 even if a woman worker had medical problems and needed to use the toilet more frequently). Sales attendants were kept under a strict watch by owners in smaller shops and by cameras in larger showrooms and were prevented from sitting down, even occasionally. Smaller stores lacked toilets and women workers were forced to spend money at public pay-and-use toilets or those in nearby hotels. Many tried to avoid using these paid facilities by not drinking water. Women workers were constantly subjected to verbal abuses and sexually suggestive remarks for requesting toilet breaks. Standing for long hours without adequate toilet breaks has led to health issues including urinary tract infection, thus impacting women workers’ physical and mental wellbeing.

The issues raised by the strike remain unaddressed by the established trade unions and by state authorities. Hence, managements, such as those at Kalyan Saris, which blatantly violated the guidelines of the Kerala Shops and Commercial Establishments Act, were not penalised by the Labour Department (PUDR, 2015).

Discussion

The new forms of organisation of informal women workers in Kerala has suggested a shift in framing their issues as citizens and directed to the state, here the state government. It was about creating a social floor—minimum social security and minimum conditions of work. Following the struggles by AMTU and advocacy, the Kerala Shops and Establishment Act, 2015 was amended in 2018 by the Left Democratic Front (LDF)-led state government and included the right to sit and the right to toilets.

Some constraints of unity of the emerging new social movement unions and traditional unions related to definitions of membership and decision-making processes. In the former, retrenched, unemployed, retired former employees found a place even as the form of engagement is direct action and campaigns. This creates the possibilities of linking with the community at local levels through panchayats, corporations and municipality governance structures to plan joint actions. This would help face casualisation, outsourcing and varied forms of reorganisation of work, unemployment, housing and so on. Varied forms of union structures might be a way to dealing with the challenges posed by informal work and marginalisation. With a declining militancy in labour movements and high unemployment, the legalism of trade unions has got entrenched in the labour movement while the direct actions of new social movement unions give such movements its dynamism.