21 March, 2012
Patience is running thin for a trade union alliance demanding proper labour rights for Holcim Cement workers in India. Management at both Indian subsidiaries of Holcim are flouting Indian law by employing contract workers in the core production process.
Contract workers there receive only one-third of the salary paid to permanent employees, and efforts to organise and bargain collectively are met by intimidation, a yellow union’s corruption, and bribery of local officials. During the struggle for recognition, three union members have been shot dead by police while protesting for the legitimate rights of Contract and Agency Labour (CAL) workers.
The contract workers are organising into the ICEM-affiliated Pragatisheel Cement Shramik Sangh (PCSS) but after 16 years of existence, the union only achieved dialogue with management following victory in a six-year-long court case.
Global pressure has forced Holcim to pay attention to the violations of contract workers in India, but when Holcim Executive Paul Hugentobler visited ACC Jamul recently, contract workers were all moved to a different shift and workers’ representatives were banned from taking part in the meeting with him. Instead, representatives of the sham company union, OP Banchore, were involved.
The leader of this yellow union is the brother of the president of the local municipal authority, Rekhram Banchore. Together they have built a loathsome alliance, including allegedly settling local community violations by out of court settlements for issues such as failure to pay full taxes to the local Nagar Panchayat Jamul body, and encroachment onto government land.
This yellow union at the plant repeatedly certifies management violations of contract workers who attempt to organise into the PCSS union. Management has forced a total of 200 contract workers into “voluntary” retirement by denying them wages and work during litigation processes for the regularisation process.
This is illegal under Indian national law, but legitimised by the company union that signed these workers’ voluntary retirement scheme documents.
Every contract worker active in the union is currently facing five-to-eight phoney criminal cases registered by management. PCSS leader Bhagwati Sahu has been in jail for ten months on spurious charges.
Holcim’s international management has undisputedly been aware of these abuses since 2008. One worker found guilty of informing Holcim’s international management of violations was punished with a forced relocation to a different worksite hundreds of miles away.
India is the second largest cement manufacturer in the world with capacity predicted to continue growing and Holcim is the largest producer of cement in India.
Solidarity for the PCSS Holcim workers is being led by ICEM and the Building and Wood Workers’ International (BWI), Swiss union affiliate UNIA, and continues to grow throughout the world. Thai affiliates of the two Global Union Federations plan a solidarity picket at Holcim in Thailand in early April.
PCSS activists will visit Switzerland 10-18 April and hold a series of meetings and demonstrations.
See more on the BWI Company Monitor page here or the ICEM’s Report “Contract and Agency Labour in Asia’s Cement Industry” here.