400 women workers of the Exodus Futura Knit Private Limited, a garment manufacturing company located in Ramchandrapur, 15 km from Kolkata in West Bengal, held a 25-day protest dharna at the factory gates, from February 21 to March 17. Through their relentless struggle, these workers succeeded in forcing the capitalist owner of the company to give them their rightful provident fund and salary dues, which had been illegally withheld for the past five years!
The company is a big apparel manufacturer in India, with buyers ranging from Decathlon, Pantaloons, and US Polo to Aditya Birla, FirstCry, Reliance, and Three Arrows. The factory is spread over 6 acres. It is equipped with 800 cutting edge machines and state of the art facilities. It boasts of a target of producing 30,000 pieces of finished product per day.
The company claims to promote “women’s empowerment and social equality”. However, when the women workers demanded their dues, the company owner put up a ‘suspension of work’ notice and closed the gates. For the workers, it was a life-and-death struggle to retain their jobs and get their rightful dues. Determined not to give up, they blocked the factory gates, preventing the management from taking out the finished goods. Through their struggle, they eventually forced an agreement with the company management. The management had to agree to take them back to work, maintaining their basic pay and increments. It had to give an assurance before the State Labour Commissioner, to clear their Provident Fund dues by the end of the year, and to grant them Earned Leave and Casual Leave in compliance with the Factory Act.
The protesting women workers developed strong bonds of solidarity with workers of other factories, who came out in their support. During the protest, they vividly described the terrible exploitation women garment workers face, in West Bengal as well as in other parts of the country.
Their struggle against their exploitative conditions has been going on for than 10 years now, they pointed out. The company was set up in 2011. It has three units — a knitting unit in Howrah, a dyeing unit in Bishnupur, and the garmenting unit in Ramchandrapur. The garmenting unit alone has around 900 women working 6 days a week. Of these, 700 are local women, while 200 are Skill India trainees from Jharkhand. These trainees are forced to stay in a hostel within the factory premises, where they are strictly forbidden from having any contact with the local women workers.
Every morning, the women workers enter the factory gate by 9 am sharp. They have to work till their production targets are met, well past the official working time of 8 hours a day. They are set targets to be met every 15 minutes, and the management clocks every movement of the workers. The workers face public humiliation and physical and verbal abuse, if their work is declared ‘unsatisfactory’, and they are made to do it all over again. To meet these targets the workers often have to forego their toilet breaks and lunch breaks, resulting in severe health problems.
The workers’ wages range from Rs 8,000 to Rs 12,000 per month, far below what is needed for a dignified human existence and far below the official minimum monthly wage of Rs 18,000. There is no proper record in the company, of the earned leave due to the workers. They have been denied their right to casual leave, with Rs 350 being deducted for each day’s leave. It was only after 18 months of struggle, that the women workers were able to force the company management to give them an official letter of employment and commit to a PF contribution.
India boasts of being the sixth largest supplier in global textile and apparel exports. It is well known that garment manufacturing companies in Gurugram, Bengaluru, Tirupur, Ludhiana, Coimbatore, Surat, Kolkata, etc. — which supply some of the top international garment brands – follow a policy of hiring women on temporary or fixed term contracts, at far below minimum wages, without any legal protection for their rights. These women workers can be hired and fired at a moment’s notice, with no compensation or social security.
The lack of safety arrangements in these garment sweatshops has frequently led to horrific fires and other accidents, in which hundreds of workers have lost their lives or been permanently disabled.
The utterly vulnerable condition of the women is used to super-exploit them, push down their wages and working conditions, and thereby enhance the profits of the capitalists. This in turn helps the capitalists to push down the wages of all workers. All this goes on with the full knowledge and connivance of the authorities of the state at all levels. The four labour codes that the government is going to notify, are intended to legalise this exploitation.
The victorious struggle of the women garment workers shows that only through the path of united and uncompromising struggle can workers resist the offensive of the capitalists against their livelihood and rights.