Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Dressing-up for the Occassion

The labour crunch and rising overheads are said to be the reason for textile and garment units heading towards rural skyline. Would that solve the problem of labour crunch? Visibly yes, considering the burgeoning rural populace that we have. But I have doubts. The problem of labour crunch is more systemic in nature and solutions are cosmetic.



The textile and garment units where majority of workers are females are slowly shying away from working in these units and are looking at retail or other sectors. This despite the fact they may skilled or semi-skilled in the trade. The real reasons for labour crunch is poor enaggement of these workers which is again due to multitude of reasons:

1. Low Pay & Long working Hours: Currently the best that a textile or a garmenrt worker get is Rs. 6000/- a month. In a city like Bangalore would this paltry amount have any value. The units that are heading towards villages are expecting this to futher reduce wages by another 25-30% for rural labours. Obviously wages are absymally low for a very demanding work.

2.Tough Working Conditions: Most of the workers are women who leave behind family and kids to come to work. Except some units, other units do not provide any transport facilities. They have no choice other then to take public transport which in their case is not an air-conditioned Volvo bus, but a 1960 model cranky overloaded bus, which should have been at the junkyard 20 years back. Besides, general working conditions do not seem to be very healthy. All this has taken a toll on the health of the workers.

3. Harassment at workplace: The harassment of the women workers is reportedly very rampant in such units and this has resulted in a psychologist disassociation of the workers. Added to this there is a growing social stigma for women who work in garment and textile units.

The industry needs to seriously look at engagement issues with the workers, if it wants to find solutions to the growing labour crunch. Going rural is fine but if things do not change in the 'system' the rot can set-in anywhere.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

hie. . . .its very good to see blogs on women employee. In industry women's must provide safety and there must be rules & regulation that should be set down to uplift the level of motivation .Different industry must assure that any type of unethical practice should not take place.