Labor

Restaurant worker from Baba Dhaba addressing NSN crowd at protest in July 2022. Banner behind her arguing for ending wage theft / exploitation

Punjabi Workers in Toronto Are Fighting Wage Theft—And They’re Winning

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Inspired by India’s recent farmer protests, immigrant truckers and students are bringing fresh militant tactics to their struggle for worker justice in the greater Toronto area. The results speak for themselves.

Arshdeep Singh, a 30-year-old Punjabi semi-truck driver in the Toronto suburb of Brampton, was left with a bloodied lip after his group’s protest on July 9 outside Sukh Auto, an auto repair shop. Singh was attacked by the shop owner, Sukhdeep Hunjan, and a handful of goons. 

It was one of said goons who threw the punch that busted Singh’s mouth. Then Hunjan, a squat boss in a tan shirt, black pants, and blue sneakers, called the police—not to report the assault, but to report the protest. 

The Peel Regional Police promptly sent 10 cop cars to the scene, but that didn’t stop the crowd of about 100 from chanting “Lutt band karo! (Stop the robbery!),” and other choice slogans.

Through campaigns reliant largely on direct action, NSN has managed to fight and win back over $200,000 CAD ($154,000 USD) in stolen wages for its members. The organization of about 100mostly Punjabi immigrant workers and students (“Naujawan”translates to “young people” in Punjabi) is a little over a year old.

This was the second protest outside Sukh Auto that Naujawan Support Network (NSN) had held in a matter of months. Both protests were designed to pressure Hunjan to pay back wages stolen from former employee Rupinder Singh by publicly naming and shaming the boss. (A note for readers: While a number of them share the last name Singh, none of the persons interviewed for this piece are related to one another.)

The sign for the shop is now gone—and, according to members of NSN, Hunjan has changed the name of his business on Google. 

Bold, militant protests like these are happening with increased frequency in Brampton, resulting in big wins for workers who have been exploited and taken advantage of for too long. And yet, the Toronto-area group’s emergence as a powerful grassroots force fighting for worker justice has been among the least reported labor stories in North America’s settler colonies over the past year (with some very limited exceptions). 

Through campaigns reliant largely on direct action, NSN has managed to fight and win back over $200,000 CAD ($154,000 USD) in stolen wages for its members. The organization of about 100 mostly Punjabi immigrant workers and students (“Naujawan” translates to “young people” in Punjabi) is a little over a year old. 

At the core of NSN is a dedicated group of volunteers and workers who connect with and support other workers who have experienced wage theft or other forms of exploitation. Mobilizing workers and community members to take collective action, like the protests in front of Sukh Auto, is an integral part of the organization’s mission—and a crucial source of its strength.

“Our benchmark—our filter—for organizing is that a worker has to be willing to come to an organizing meeting and fight for their rights while standing alongside other workers,” Simran Dhunna, a 26-year-old NSN organizer, told TRNN.

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Indian Farmers Rise Up Against Corporatization

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by Selina Singh*

Thousands of Indian farmers have parked outside the capital Delhi for more than 100 days. They have pitched tents on five highways that lead to the city and say they will leave only when the federal government withdraws three new farm laws enacted last September. 

Half the Indian population depends on agriculture for a living, and farms are almost entirely family-run. The protesting farmers fear these new laws will corporatize Indian agriculture. They may not know what happened to American farmers when Ronald Reagan was president, but what scares them is akin to what happened then—loss of income, more indebtedness, and the empowerment of a pillaging BigAg. 

Most of the agitating farmers are from two Indian states, Punjab and Haryana. In both regions, federal and state governments buy up most of the staple food grain that farmers raise. The government also fixes the price of the grain it buys at a Minimum Support (or purchase) Price. To varying degrees of efficiency, this purchase system prevails in most Indian states. 

Indian farmers, workers, and the poor depend on the purchase price and the government procurement system. For growers of rice and wheat, this price is a stable and assured source of income. Governments sell a part of the food grain they procure at subsidized rates. Roughly 800 million of the poor rely on this subsidy to be able to afford their food. 

After introducing the new laws, the government assured farmers their income would double in two years. But farmers rejected the offer, saying they prefer the reliable MSP system over grand dreams of higher income. They say they will be ruined by the three new laws—the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020, the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020, and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020. 

Favors for Corporates

Farmers are afraid of these laws because they create a parallel agricultural market, one where there are no transaction taxes. The existing markets run by state governments charge a transaction tax (it is an 8.5 percent tax in Punjab) for their upkeep. If traders would move outside the government-regulated markets to operate in the tax-free open market, farmers expect it will undermine the MSP system.

Initially, farmers suspect, they may get higher prices for their produce from private traders or agro-giants than in the existing markets. But over time, the government-run markets would start failing. Then, say the farmers, they would be at the mercy of agribusiness giants. 

The new laws also permit and encourage contract farming, wherein farmers would enter into contracts with companies that would commit to supplying seeds, fertilizer, and other inputs to farmers (or groups of farmers), in exchange for raising crops demanded by the companies at pre-fixed rates. Farmers fear this will have private companies impose stringent conditions on what crops they can raise and how. The risk of rejection of crops over “quality issues” would forever loom over them. They are anxious that contract farming could reduce them to workers on their land, raising crops at the instructions of companies that they enter into contracts with. 

They resent that the law on contract farming is formulated in a way that the contracting company would control the input as well as the output of farming.

“Any company we enter into a farming contract with will supply us seed, fertilizer, pesticide, etc. So, our inputs will be under the control of the company. Existing retail stores will go out of business [as they cannot withstand competition from corporate giants]. Then, the grain we produce will also go to the same company,” says Joginder Singh Ugrahan, who heads the Indian Farmer Union (Ekta-Ugrahan). 

It is the biggest farmer union in Punjab and represents the interests of small and marginal farmers. A small farmer owns up to 5 acres of land, while a marginal farmer owns less than 2.5 acres of land.

The new law on contract farming bars farmers from approaching civil courts if there are disputes. It says they can take out loans to finance their contractual obligations, but the government will recover arrears on land revenue from farmers who fail to meet contracted obligations. That, farmers say, means their land (and/or other assets) would be auctioned to recover what they owe. In other words, contract farming is luring farmers with higher returns but it could make them even more vulnerable than they are. 

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Illustration of French fashion model imposed on wreckage of Rana Plaza buildings

Rana Plaza, Coronavirus, and the Need for Worker Organizing

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The continuing aftermath of a disaster

As health and safety concerns around workplaces have reentered American public dialogue, it is worth noting that yesterday marked the seventh anniversary of the Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh. Over 1,000 people died in the worst industrial disaster in the history of the garment industry.

Last August, I wrote a piece for Labor Notes on the state of efforts to prevent a similar disaster from happening again:

On April 23, 2013, a local television crew shot footage of cracks in the Rana Plaza factory complex in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The building was evacuated, but the owner of the building declared it safe and told workers to come back the next day. One Walmart supplier housed in the building, Ether Tex, threatened to withhold a month’s wages from any workers who didn’t return.

The building collapsed on April 24, and when the rubble was finally cleared, 1,134 people were found dead, with another 2,500 injured. It was the worst industrial disaster in the history of the garment industry.

From the ashes of Rana Plaza emerged the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety. An international compact among nonprofit organizations, Western manufacturers and retailers, local Bangladeshi union federations, and several major global unions, the Accord has monitored fire and building safety in 1,700 factories in Bangladesh over the past six years for signatory brands.

The upshot of the story was that the Accord, while providing important gains in safety for Bangladesh’s enormous garment sector, did not go all the way in protecting the more fundamental right to organize from which real security on the job stems:

Chaumtoli Huq, a professor at the City University of New York School of Law and maker of the 2017 film Sramik Awaaz (Worker Voices) on the Bangladeshi garment industry, said that’s a problem..“The workers I interviewed in my documentary were very clear in what they think needs to happen—it wasn’t renew the Accord, it was put a union in my factory.” She argues that the international solidarity movement is not sufficiently listening to those workers…

“What’s odd is that you have almost these two parallel movements—you have the Accord piece and you have the wages and unionization piece,” said Huq.

At the time, minimum wage in the Bangladeshi garment sector was about $95 a month, or a quarter of what would constitute a living wage.

What’s changed in the last year? Well, wages sure haven’t gone up.

Instead, a different kind of industrial disaster has occurred. With the pandemic collapsing demand and supply chains around the world by March, one million garment workers in Bangladesh were laid off or furloughed, a quarter of the total workforce in the country’s garment industry. Most were sent home without severance or owed money, according to the New York Times. Most Western brands are avoiding financial responsibility to the workers.

The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA)’s members, who own not just factories but Parliament itself, are getting bailed out by the government to the tune of $590 million. Workers, on the other hand, have to face the twin calamities of extreme financial distress and worries about the spread of the virus.

The situation shows that responding to Rana Plaza with technocratic fixes and deals with the brands that were narrowly oriented on preventing another Rana Plaza-style industrial disaster—however well intentioned—was not enough. What’s needed to prevent the wide range of catastrophes that can affect workers in the global South is to emphasize building real worker power that can allow Bangladeshi people to advocate for themselves.

Otherwise, all you’ll end up with is another catastrophe down the line—one that is different in nature, but all too familiar in its decimation of the lives of the most vulnerable members of the supply chains that provide goods and services for Western corporations.

It’s not hopeless; it just takes respect for the will and the organizing capacity that Bangladeshi workers themselves already have. Solidarity, siblings.

Nestle workers locked out of Kabirwala factory for months

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Workers at a Nestle factory in Kabirwala, Pakistan are engaged in a months-long struggle with factory management and the multinational corporation.  South Asia Labor Watch is planning to participate in solidarity actions in the Washington, DC area in coming days.

Organizers of the Nestle Workers Action Committee, are demanding regularization of contract workers, an end to a lockout of about 800 workers, an end to anti-union activities including allegedly fraudulent anti-terror cases, and the implementation of an agreement negotiated by the union.

According to solidarity activists, workers face hunger and potential starvation due to the lockout.  Anti-union activities include a series of reportedly fraudulent “anti-terror” cases brought against union leader Muhammad Hussain Bhatti, who spent two months in jail leading up to his January 6 release on bail.

The workers’ supporters are requesting statements of solidarity and international protests of Nestle.  The NWAC has requested statements of solidarity to: Nestle Workers Action Committee at imranbari80@gmail.com; Pakistan National Trade Union Federation at pntufcenter@gmail.com; and copies to cwi@worldsoc.co.uk.

It is calling for statements of condemnation to Nestle’s global headquarters (below), Nestle’s Pakistan office  at NAATA@pk.nestle.com, and international offices of Nestle in your home country.  They are also seeking pickets and protests of Nestle sites around the world.

Nestle head office in Switzerland contact information:

Nestlé S.A. Avenue Nestlé 55, 1800 Vevey, Switzerland
General enquiries +41 21 924 1111
Media +41 21 924 2200
mediarelations@nestle.com

Update:

The union president a day before his arrest describing the lockout:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yr1pC–jAZE

The head of the workers committee describing the situation:

Organizing the Invisible: The Movement to Unionize Domestic Workers in Bangalore

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The protest at the Labor Department “clearly reveals the collective assertion of domestic workers, covered by no law or social security,” according to Geeta Menon

by Lavanya Nott

It is a weekday afternoon in early October. About fifteen women ranging in age from about twenty to sixty gather in a small two-room office in Jaynagar in South Bangalore. This is Dussera season, and on this day of the festival, it is customary to worship one’s work tools, so the women have brought along buckets and mops. They are here for a meeting, but before it begins, one woman performs a small puja, and another distributes sweets.

This is the Executive Committee of the domestic workers’ union that operates under the umbrella of Stree Jagruti Samiti (SJS), a non-governmental organization based in Bangalore, India and formed by long-time women’s rights activist Geeta Menon. The group is fighting for the rights and welfare of those in the unorganized sector.

The women gathered for the Executive Committee sing praises of the union, giving it credit for educating them on their rights. One woman, Saraswati, talks about how, after her involvement with the union, she is able to state her own terms and conditions to potential employers before being hired, thus tilting the power dynamic more in her favour. The women tell the story of a fellow union member Shaila, who was wrongfully accused of theft. Shaila was thrown out of her employers’ house, and was standing at their gate, crying, when Vonamma, the president of the Executive Committee, and other members of the union came to support her.

Vonamma was able to articulate to the employers that if they were intent on firing Shaila, they would have to make an official police complaint and find some evidence of her guilt. The employers finally gave in, admitting that there had been no theft. Shaila was unable to keep the job, but she was able to retain her pride and her employer was made to apologize. It seems like the community that the union has helped build among these women has been a major driving force for their strength—both collectively and individually. The women have been inspired by one another, and are learning from each other’s experiences.

Vonamma was seven years old when she began domestic work. Born in Bangalore, her father died very soon after her birth. Her mother—also a domestic worker—was left with the task of raising eight children. None of them received an education, and as a result, they also joined the workforce. Vonamma toiled away in a kitchen, standing on a stool that would raise her small figure to the kitchen counter, and was beaten by her employers when she displayed tiredness. Now she is twenty-nine, is unmarried, and lives with her mother. On this afternoon, she is cheerful and animated, and leads the proceedings when the meeting commences.

The Executive Committee is elected during the union’s general body elections. Women are recruited to the union through intensive fieldwork: SJS goes directly to the places where they live and work. Menon says, “The first step is to recognize that these places are no longer just slums, but labour colonies.” Most of the women in the union live in slums, and SJS’s work involves recognizing that these urban spaces are not merely dwelling places, but sources of labour, and that these women are economic entities. Making an effort to move on from thinking of slums merely as the residences of these women is making the effort to recognize the work that these women do—including daily labour in their own homes, in their capacities as wives, mothers, daughters, daughters-in-law, caretakers, and as women living on the economic margins.

Hailing from various parts of South India, the shared characteristic among the women of SJS is a lack of education and skills. Most only went through a few years of school. For instance, Rajeshwari, the Secretary of the union, was pulled out of school at age fifteen. While this lack of education severely hampers the women’s social and economic mobility, Rajeshwari says that working with the unions has undone some of that for many of the women. They are in many ways more empowered to stand up for themselves and preserve their dignity. Saraswati, a member of the union, says that most of the women state their own terms and conditions to future employers, and inform them of their involvement with the union. It appears that being unionized has given these women a greater sense of self and belonging—some larger context and perspective from which to think about the work that they do and their legitimate, economic contributions to their communities.

Rajeshwari works for two families in Mantri Elegance, one of many colossal high-rise apartment buildings that have sprouted in Bangalore in the past two decades. These high rises house Bangalore’s ever-expanding upper-middle class—a generation of young software professionals nurtured and supported by Bangalore’s IT-dominated economy and representative of India’s growing neoliberal practices of large-scale consumerism and capitalism. The great influx of money that this economy has created has given this professional middle class that much more spending potential, leading to a greater demand for domestic help.

While most of the women have resigned themselves to lives in the informal sector—lives that, in all probability, will continue to be on the margins of Bangalore’s society and economy, they seem determined to fight for the rights and dignities they deserve, and more so, for happier lives for their children. The most difficult step in this movement appears to be the translation of these dreams of respectable wages, regular bonuses, and workplace dignity into reality. Two factors stand out more clearly than others as hindrances to the fulfillment of these dreams: firstly, the oppression and mistreatment of domestic workers is firmly embedded in Indian middle-class society’s psyche, and much of the struggle for these women’s rights depends on some level of malleability on the part of their employers. Secondly, there is a sense of inertia among the women when it comes to taking larger steps forward, especially with regard to their own literacy and education. Solving these problems—for example, mobilizing these women to participate in adult education programs of some sort—however, is an expensive, resource-consuming endeavor.

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Whither the World: a short note on Narendra Modi

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If you have spent any time on social media that deals with India, you have run across the name of its new Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. The erstwhile Chief Minister of Gujarat is in the United States this week on a state visit, overcoming a multi-year ban on his presence due to complicity in anti-Muslim pogroms while he ran the state.  He is, by all accounts, being treated like a rock star, having appeared before 20,000 fans at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

A less trumpeted but far more enlightening visitor to the States is Manoj Mitta.  Mitta is a reporter for the Times of India and author of two books on communal violence in India.  He addressed a small crowd at George Washington University in Washington, DC tonight at an event sponsored by the Sikh Coalition.

Through a recounting of anti-Sikh pogroms in 1984 and anti-Muslim ‘rioting’ in 2002, Mitta effectively laid out an argument that Indian democracy and the Indian state have  a serious and ongoing issue with anti-minority violence that can’t be explained away as just two major episodes. He pointed out that there was a failure to hold perpetrators accountable in both instances, and that the impunity around the anti-Sikh pogroms helped lead to a political calculus in favor of anti-Muslim violence. This, he implied, pointed to a system problem.

Academic Atul Kohli provided a fairly convincing explanation for this system problem, why India’s politics over the last three decades have been so communal in nature.  In brief, he argues that India’s governments have been pro-rich for the last 30 years, and this leaves few vehicles to mobilize the voting base.  Communalism of the kind exposed by Mitta is one such avenue.

We see laid bare, then, the links between labor and economic justice issues on the one hand and the politics of communalism and other identities on the other; the neoliberals are using communal politics as a way to drum up support for a pro-rich electoral program that would otherwise be rejected.

7/26/14: National day of action against REI

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On this Saturday, students across the United States are asking you to join them in a national day of actions at outlets of REI, a sporting goods chain.  In places like Rockville, Maryland (see below) or Seattle, Washington, they will be asking REI to do its part to support worker safety in Bangladesh.

In order to understand why students are protesting REI, we need to follow the money from Rockville and Seattle to Dhaka and Narayanganj in Bangladesh.

 

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The graphic above shows the path of the cash which leaves the consumers’ hand for the registers of REI.   REI, in turn, pays Greensboro-NC-based VF Corporation for the backpacks, pants, sleeping bags, and other goods it stocks.  VF Corporation, in turn, has contracted out the work to produce its goods to factories in Bangladesh like Medlar Apparels and Optimum Fashion (pdf).  Finally, these factories have pushed their  workers, for extremely low pay and long hours, to produce the goods on time and with sufficient quality; in exchange the workers receive a very small percentage of the total cost the consumer paid.

Bangladesh’s garment industry is experiencing a crisis in terms of building safety and other, very basic measures of worker well being.  This crisis was concretized in the collapse of Rana Plaza, a multistory building where over 1,100 workers died in April 2013.

There are two main efforts right now to try to establish basic conditions like ‘the building won’t burn down’ in Bangladesh’s garment sector.  The first is the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety, which, according to USAS, is a legally binding agreement between brands and legitimate representatives of workers in Bangladesh.  Importantly, the Accord includes unionizing and other worker organizing into the basic framework for improving building safety; as such, it recognizes that worker organizing is important not just in and of itself, but also vital for ensuring that worker concerns about building safety are heard.

The alternative to the Accord is a company sponsored effort called the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety.  The Alliance is an initiative spearheaded primarily by American corporations like Wal-Mart and lacks the teeth that the Accord has.  Most importantly, it does not have the same practical commitment to the importance of worker organizing.

Back to this Saturday.  What USAS is asking consumers–asking you to do –is  to use the leverage that you have over REI by requesting that REI remove VF Corporation’s goods from its shelves.  If successful, this would put further pressure on VF Corporation to sign up to the stronger measure, the Accord, and thus lend support to active worker organizing efforts in Bangladesh by legitimate representatives.

It may sound complicated, but it boils down to a very simple fact: in that diagram above, the consumers are the only group of people besides the workers themselves that can be reliably asked to take the side of labor.  If you can, show up at an REI near you to support Bangladeshi workers on Saturday.  Here’s the announcement for the DC area action:

Take Action at REI in Rockville, MD to End Deathtrap Working Conditions in Bangladesh

Who: United Students Against Sweatshops, the nation’s largest student-run organization supporting workers rights, and YOU!

What: Since 2005, more than 1,800 garment workers have died in preventable factory fires and building collapses in Bangladesh. In the wake of these disasters and in the face of massive pressure from consumers, over 175 apparel brands have signed the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, a legally-binding agreement between brands and unions that holds the promise of bringing an end to mass fatality disasters in the garment industry.

Unfortunately, North Face its parent company, VF Corporation, have refused to sign this groundbreaking agreement. Instead, the company has teamed up with its buddies from Walmart to create a fake safety program that excludes workers and is not legally binding.

Students and consumers are taking action at REI stores to demand that the company pull all North Face products from its shelves unless VF signs the Accord. Unfortunately, just this month REI said that it would not cut ties with North Face or meet with students to discuss the company’s human rights abuses. Now we’re stepping up the pressure to show REI that our demands can’t be ignored.

When: 12:30pm, Saturday, July 26th

Where: 1701 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD 20852

Bangladeshi government, garment owners, to lobby members of U.S. Congress on 7/15/14

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On Tuesday, representatives of both the Bangladeshi government and an industry body for garment manufacturers and exporters will be lobbying members of the U.S. Congress.   They will be looking to restore tariff benefits under the Generalized System of Preferences that have been suspended since last year by the Obama Administration.  The benefits were suspended by the U.S. government shortly after the collapse of the Rana Plaza building left over 1,100 Bangladeshi garment workers dead in a preventable factory disaster.

The Bangladeshi government and BGMEA will be meeting with several Democratic Congress members, including John Conyers, Sander Levin, Gary Peters, George Miller, and Mike Honda, and the staff members of others, including Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Jerry Connolly, Sheila Jackson, and Keith Ellison.  The parties will be discussing progress on a set of demands that the U.S. government has made of the Bangladeshi garment sector and the Bangladeshi government to improve safety and foster unionization.

A hasty return to better trade terms between Bangladesh and one of its main customers, the United States, would remove a substantial source of pressure currently pushing garment owners and the Bangladeshi government to allow improved working conditions and unionization.  Such a step might also signal brands like Wal-Mart and Children’s Place that the U.S. government feels enough progress has been made to return to the status quo in trade terms when in fact much remains to be done on both building safety and worker rights in the Bangladeshi garment sector.

The meeting is being organized by a Bangladeshi diaspora group that seeks participation of the Bangladeshi community in the Democratic Party.  Members of the media have also been invited.

Big up, BIGUF

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Nomita Nath is the 26-year-old President of the Bangladesh Independent Garment Workers Union Federation, the largest garment workers’ union federation in Bangladesh.  BIGUF has 42 unionized factories as member unions and several more pending.  Nath was recently in Washington, DC for an International Labor Rights Forum conference on women’s rights and worker rights as well as several meetings with U.S. government officials.  Outspoken, clear, and committed, Nath is a leader of and an ally to garment workers in Bangladesh and elsewhere around the world.