Government of India
ON
EVALUATION STUDIES ON IMPLEMENTATION OF
THE
MINIMUM WAGES ACT, 1948
|
Government of India |
|
|
ON
EVALUATION STUDIES ON IMPLEMENTATION OF THE
MINIMUM WAGES ACT, 1948 IN BIDI MAKING ESTABLISHMENTS INMADHYA PRADESH |
CHAPTER
IV
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EMPLOYEES
4.1INTRODUCTION
4.1.1 The Bidi Industry is a highly labour intensive industry where a large proportion of workers falls in the unorganised sector.These workers have not been able to organize because of a number of constraints such as (a) casual and scattered nature of employment, (b) illiteracy and lack of awareness, (c) low capital investment per employee, (d) superior strength of the employee, etc.Identification of these workers, widely scattered in the urban and rural areas, is necessary for extending the benefits under various welfare schemes run by the State Labour Department as well as the Welfare Commissioner, Government of India in an effective manner.The present Chapter describes the characteristics of the employees covered under the present Study in terms of attributes like education, length of service, age, caste and origin (rural/urban). These characteristics have a bearing on the level of implementation of the Minimum Wages Act, 1948.
4.2Types
of Employees
4.2.1
The Study covered 400 employees comprised of 106 ‘Bidi Workers’ and 294
'Bidi Rollers' (home workers). Different categories of employees at various
stages of sampling were covered to give adequate representation to all
categories.
4.2.2
Bidi
Workers
4.2.2.1
The number of bidi workers under different categories covered by the study
in different strata are presented in Table 4.1.
Table 4.1 Category-wise Distribution of Bidi Workers
-The
percentage figure shown against the total of each category is weighted
averages. The weights being total workers(category-wise)
in all the strata.
4.2.2.2
The perusal of the table reveals that large proportion of the workers (84.9
per cent) in the covered establishments were engaged in production oriented
operations such as wrapping, making of bundles, labelling, tarai, sorting/checking,
sekai, raw material distribution, etc.The
remaining 15.1 percent were engaged in the office work.However,
in some small bidi making areas like Bhopal, Indore, Ujjain, Gwalior, Datiya
etc. and in small bidi factories, production workers were usually engaged
in more than one operation. But for the present study such workers have
been put in the category in which they were generally employed.It
was also found that in some areas, Sorters / Checkers were also distributing
raw materials and Clerks were working as Managers in small branches of
the Trade Mark Establishments.
4.2.3
Bidi
Rollers
4.2.3.1
The Bidi Rollers constituted 73.5 percent of the total employees covered
in the bidi establishments in the State. Sattedars distributed raw material
at their dwellings for rolling bidis. The distribution of Bidi Rollers
covered in the study by stratum and by gender is presented in Table
4.2.
Table
4.2 Sex-wise Distribution of Bidi Rollers Covered
EXHIBIT - 4 Sex –wise Distribution of Bidi Rollers Covered (Table 4.2)
4.2.3.2 It is evident from the above table that the proportion of females among the Bidi Rollers was as much as 72.4 percent. The high proportion of females in bidi rolling can be attributed to the fact that bidi rolling is done at the dwellings of the Bidi Rollers and the female Bidi Rollers found it more convenient to take up this job alongwith their domestic chores. It was also observed that the majority of these Bidi Rollers belonged to the Muslim community who (females) were averse to go out of their homes for wage employment. In fact, it was observed that females in rural areas prefer to seek employment in bidi rolling during lean agricultural season and supplement their household income in free time as there are no fixed time limits or hours for completing the jobs and the female Bidi Rollers can do it alongside their domestic work.
4.3
Level
of Education
4.3.1 Bidi employees constitute a heterogeneous group of workers whose working depends on experience and skills acquired over time. Majority of the employees work on piece rate wages.The piece-rate employees include a vast majority of Bidi Rollers and the bidi workers attending to labelling, packing, wrapping, etc.These employees were vulnerable to exploitation due to lack of knowledge about the prescribed wages, limits for rejection of sub-standard bidis and capabilities to keep an account of the raw material, output and deductions made by the employers.The level of awareness and education has a direct bearing on the capability of the employees to know about their rights and responsibilities and seek redressal of their grievances.Therefore, it is necessary to have data about the level of education. During the study, an attempt was made to study the level of education of bidi employees.
4.3.2
Bidi
Workers
Table
4.3. presents the percentage distribution of bidi workers according to
the level of education.
Table
4.3 Distribution
of Bidi Workers by their Level of Education
EXHIBIT - 4 BidiWorkers Coveredby their Level of Education (Table 4.3)
Above table reveals that among the bidi workers working in the premises of the establishments only 7.5 percent workers had education beyond matriculation level; 25.5 percent workers were illiterate, 39.6 and 15.1 percent workers had studied upto Primary and middle levels respectively and the remaining 12.3 percent were Matriculates. They were generally working as Taraiwalas, Sorters, Checkers, Bhattiwala (Furnaceman/Sekai Wala), Raw Material Distributors, Packers, Wrappers, etc.The bidi workers with education beyond matriculation level were usually working as clerks responsible for account keeping, supervision and decision making.All the bidi workers, had acquired adequate knowledge about the jobs assigned to them on the basis of experience.
4.3.3Bidi
Rollers
The
Bidi Rollers (home workers) constituted a homogeneous group of workers.Majority
of them being females who were low paid workers devoid of bargaining power
and residing in rural areas.Their
wage employment is dependent on the Sattedars or their agents.The
employer-employee relationship carries no meaning under such circumstances.They
were available for rolling bidis at any rate much below the prescribed
wages. They constituted the group of'wage
takers' with near zero reservation price, who have no choice but to accept
the wages offered to them how-so-ever low their levels may be. The percentage
distribution of Bidi Rollers according to their level of education is presented
in Table 4.4.
A
perusal of the table reveals that majority of the Bidi Rollers (41.5 percent)
were illiterate, only 3.7 percent of them had received education upto matriculation
and none was educated beyond matric. This was attributed to the fact that
a large number of the Bidi Rollers were females, mostly belonging to rural
areas or to the muslim community who were traditionally averse to outdoor
activities whether for education or employment.The
educated ones also had to take up this job, as they did not have access
to other avenues of employment.
4.3.4All
Bidi Employees
The
percentage distribution of all the bidi employees (bidi workers and Bidi
Rollers) taken together according to the levels of education is presented
in Table 4.5.
Table
4.5 Percentage Distribution of Bidi Employees by Levels of Education
The
table reveals that the proportion of illiterate workers and those having
education upto primary level was more or less same i.e. 37.3 percent and
38.7 percent respectively.Only 2
percent of the employees had received education beyond matric level. About
16.0 and 6.0 per cent had received education upto middle level and matric
level respectively.
4.4
Distribution of Employees by Broad Age Groups
4.4.1
Section 24 and Section 25 of the Beedi and Cigar Workers (Conditions of
Employment) Act, 1966 prohibit the employment of children below the age
of 14 years and of young persons between the age of 14 to 18 years in any
industrial premises. Section 25 also restricts the women workers working
in night shifts from 7.00 p.m. to 6.00 a.m. The employees covered by the
study have been classified into three broad age groups viz., 18 to 30 years,
31 to 45 years and 46 to 60 years.It
is evident from the Table 4.6 that a significant proportion (62.3 per cent)of
the workerscovered in the study
were in the age group of 31-45 years followed by 29.2 per cent in the age
group of 18-30 years and a meagre 8.5 percent in the age group of 46-60
years.
Table
4.6 Distribution of Bidi Workers
by Age Groups
EXHIBIT
– 5 Distribution of Bidi Workers by Age Group (Table 4.6)
Table 4.7 depicts the distribution
of the Bidi Rollers by age groups.The
age structure of the Bidi Rollers is similar to the bidi workers. The highest
proportion (52.4 percent) of Bidi Rollers was also found to be in the age
group of 31-45 years, followed by 38.4 percent in the age group of 18-30
years and 9.2 percent in the 46-60 years age group.
Table
4.7 Distribution of Bidi Rollers by Age Groups
EXHIBIT
– 6 Distribution of Bidi Rollers by Age Group (Table 4.7)
4.5 Caste
Composition
The
caste composition of employees in the establishments covered is presented
in Table 4.8.
Table
4.8 Proportion of the Scheduled Castes Amongst the Employees
It emerges from Table 4.8 that only 15.1 percent of the bidi workers belonged to the Scheduled Castes category.The study revealed that the Scheduled Castes workers usually preferred to move out in search of higher wages for supplementing their family income, the workers belonging to other castes on the other hand preferred employment at their home places even on low wages. The overall percentage of the Scheduled Castes workers among the all bidi employees was found to be 42.2 percent.There was no Scheduled Tribes worker in the sample establishments.
4.6
Length of Service
4.6.1
The information relating to length of service of bidi employees collected
during the survey indicated that long years of service in the industry
improved the level of awareness of the employees about their rights as
well as the existing legal provisions and made them better equipped to
struggle for the same. Percentage distribution of bidi workers and Bidi
Rollers according to the length of service is presented in Table. 4.9.
Table
4.9 Distribution of Bidi Workers andBidi
Rollers by Length of Service
EXHIBIT – 7(A) Distribution of Bidi Workers by Age Group (Table 4.7)
EXHIBIT – 7(B) Distribution of Bidi Rollers by Length of Service (Table 4.9)
4.6.2
It emanates from table 4.9 that 53.7 percent of the bidi workers&
49.7percent of Bidi Rollers had put in less than 10 years of service.The
percentage of workers and Bidi Rollers with 10-20 years of service is 39.6
percent and 43.5 percent and for those who had put in more than 20 year
of service, it was 6.7 percent and 6.8 percent respectively.
4.6.3
Welfare facilities like the provision of provident fund, bonus, leave with
wages, health and housing provided by the Welfare Commissioner, Government
of India encouraged the employees to continue with their jobs.
4.7
Origin of Workers:
The
bidi industry comprises of a large number of establishments, industrial
premises, distribution and collection centres with clusters of Bidi Rollers
scattered over cities, towns and villages. The industry draws its manpower
both from rural and urban areas. Rural labour generally, is more vulnerable
to exploitation than their urban counterparts.The
percentage distribution of both ‘bidi workers’ and ‘Bidi Rollers’ according
to the area of origin is given in Table 4.10.
Table
4.10 Proportion of Employees
with Rural/Urban Background
4.7.2 The table clearly highlights that bulk of the bidi employees -73.0 percent, had a rural background and only 27.0 percent had an urban base. The proportion of bidi workers and Bidi Rollers having rural background was 77.4 and 71.4 per cent respectively mainly because of the low availability ofother employment opportunities in the rural areas.
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