Forced Labour: Antithesis of Decent Work

The International Labour Organization (ILO) has been concerned with forced labour from its earliest years. In 1926, amid growing concern about the use of forced labour by colonial governments, the ILO initiated the drafting of the Forced Labour Convention (No. 29) that was adopted in 1930 and came into force in 1932. India ratified Convention 29 on 30 November 1954.

Later, in 1950, the ILO became concerned with the increasing use of forced labour as a means of political re-education or suppression of dissent, especially in totalitarian regimes. The Abolition of Forced Labour Convention (No. 105) was adopted in 1957, to address such practices, and came into force in 1959. India ratified the Convention on 18 May 2000. In 1999, ILO also adopted the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention (No. 182). This is yet to be ratified by India. In all these conventions (29, 105 and 182), the ILO kept the definition of forced labour consistent.

In 1998, the ILO adopted the Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, in order to strengthen regulations and programmes ensuring workers’ rights, namely:

• Freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining
• Elimination of all forms of forced or compulsory labour
• Effective abolition of child labour
• Elimination of discrimination, with respect to employment and occupation

Elimination of all forms of forced or compulsory labour and effective abolition of child labour are among the four fundamental principles mentioned in the Declaration. The first Global Report on Forced Labour, published and presented at the ILO Conference in 2001, was drafted in line with these principles. As part of its efforts to promote the declaration and to combat forced labour, ILO created a Special Action Programme (SAP-FL) in November 2001, for conducting research, providing technical assistance and implementing projects on forced labour across the globe.

According to ILO estimates (2011), 20.9 million people are victims of forced labour globally, trapped in jobs into which they were either coerced or deceived and which they cannot leave. Human trafficking can also be regarded as forced labour, and this estimate captures the full scope of human trafficking for labour and sexual exploitation, or what can be termed as ‘modern-day slavery’. This means that around three in every 1,000 persons worldwide have been engaged as forced labour at any given point in time over this ten-year period.

Forced Labour/Bonded Labour in India

In India, bonded labour has been known to exist for centuries, a reflection of a deeply divided socio-economic hierarchy, inherent in a largely agricultural and feudal system, in which members from socially marginalised communities were forced to work under highly exploitative terms for the more powerful sections of society.

Today, bonded labour is illegal, having been outlawed in India, with the adoption of the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act in 1976. This has led to the establishment of formal provisions for the identification, release and rehabilitation of bonded labourers. Unfortunately, many of the ‘released’ labourers enter into bondage again because of ineffective rehabilitation practices.

However, the changing practice of bonded labour in India—from a ‘traditional form’, to a more ‘short-term’ bondage, or ‘neo-bondage’, based primarily on economic transactions—has redefined the issue. Many workers get into short-term bondage because of loans and advances they take from their employers or recruitment agents/sardars; as a consequence, they are ‘tied’ to their employers till the loans or advances are settled. This scenario exists across industries, including—but not limited to—brick kilns, stone quarries, agriculture, domestic work, garment industry, bangle-making, agarbatti-making, match-making and beedi-making.

In many of these cases, vulnerability to bondage increases with migration of both men and women workers, especially in cases of seasonal migration. The migrants take loans at a high rate of interest from moneylenders in their villages, to meet the expenses for life-cycle events (marriage, death, health issues) or for agricultural and other consumption needs. These workers, then, take an advance from their employers to repay these loans.

Given that new forms of bondage arise in the general economic relations of employment, when adhering to the letter and spirit of the legal prohibition of bonded labour and its provision for support of bonded labourers, it is essential to focus on an approach, based on the minimum requirements at work—defining and recognising dignity and decent work, and preventing workers from slipping into bondage.

ILO’s Dictum: Promotion of Decent Work to Counter Bonded Labour

Decent Work lies at the heart of ILO, and is defined as “productive work for men and women in conditions of freedom, equity, security and dignity”. Using ILO’s four pillars of decent work—fundamental principles and rights at work, decent employment and income, social protection for all, tripartism and social dialogue—bondage is being prevented. This is based on a four-pronged approach, comprising:

• Social protection: Convergence of the existing government schemes and services for vulnerable populations, both at source and destination areas.
• Workplace improvement and adherence to the law: Putting in place codes of conduct to ensure decent work and decent living conditions, in close collaboration with employers’ organisations. This includes ensuring minimum wages, regular payment of wages, and maintenance of records and registers as per the law, registration of employers, ensuring no child labour, and so on.
• Promoting rights and empowering workers: Imparting rights-based awareness, organising/unionising workers, enabling the process of collective bargaining and giving workers collective voice and strength.
• Promoting social dialogue: Looking for practical and innovative solutions, to address key areas of concern, through an active social dialogue process among tripartite partners, such as improvements in recruitment systems and working conditions, regulation of payment of wages and advances, and ensuring safe migration of workers across states.

This approach has been piloted under the project ‘Reducing Vulnerability to Bondage in India through Promotion of Decent Work’, which is jointly implemented in the brick kiln sector in select districts of six states (Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and, more recently, in Bihar) by ILO, Ministry of Labour and Employment (MoLE), government of India and the state departments of Labour and Employment.

The ‘convergence approach’ used in the project allows coordinated action, to reduce workers’ vulnerability to bondage by converging action:

• Of the government, trade unions and employers, in which each actor plays its role in the project to reduce vulnerability to bondage;
• Of different departments at the national/state and district levels, to focus on the needs of workers;
On the entire family of the migrant women and men workers, their children and the members, who are left behind when the family migrates.

Typically, because forced labour and the issue of migration are intrinsically linked, interventions require a clear outline of roles and responsibilities for sending and receiving states, as well as collaboration among states. The project supports such inter-state coordination mechanisms, the nuances of which have been worked out in a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the various source and destination states.

Achievements

The long-term outcome expected from the project is a significant reduction in household vulnerability to bondage, through an integrated approach to the promotion of decent work. It aims at improving the condition of workers in situ by reducing and removing possible elements of bondage and coercion in the labour relationship.

From pilot project to state-owned initiative: The current project for brick kiln workers in select source and destination districts in six states of India (2011–13) was replicated and scaled up, based on the learning from earlier ILO projects in India since 2001. The strategy used in the current project was first piloted in a small cluster of rice mills and brick kilns in Tamil Nadu (2009–11).

• The pilot in Tamil Nadu was largely funded by ILO and implemented by local NGOs, employers and trade unions. However, the current project is largely funded and implemented by the state governments, with relatively small budgetary support from ILO. The current project also addresses the issue of intra- and inter-state migrant workers, especially inter-state coordination. This was facilitated through an MOU signed by MoLE and two project states (in June 2012), and a second one between MoLE and four other states (in February, 2013). It laid down the roles and responsibilities of the sending and the receiving states. The current project is owned by the state governments and is, hence, more sustainable, replicable and can be scaled up in other districts for brick kiln workers or other categories of workers, vulnerable to bondage. Constant knowledge-sharing and capacity building of the tri-partite partners have enabled the good practices of one state to be adapted and replicated in other project and non-project states and districts.

Implementation of the project: The project worked at the source and destination areas of migrant brick kiln workers. This included generating awareness in source areas, promoting the registration of workers, licensing of recruitment agents, setting up District Facilitation Centres, facilitating access to social security and health security for workers in the source and the destination areas. At the destination area, the project aimed at improving worksite living and working conditions, the provision of housing, sanitation and water, assuring regular payment of minimum wages and maintenance of written records of wages and loans/advances. Usually, the workers move as families, with their infants, young children, adolescents and old parents. The project worked at converging different government department schemes such as health, education and integrated child-care facilities for the workers and their family members. The organisation of workers so that they have collective strength and bargaining capacity was promoted, along with enhancing the awareness of their rights and the sensitisation of the employers. The work also involved recognising women as workers in their own right, who are entitled to access to government schemes as individuals and not just as wives of male workers, and are, therefore, paid wages equal to that which men receive.

Key achievements

The project has seen several achievements. Some of the key ones are:

- Policy-level Interventions: A sub-group on vulnerable groups, including bonded labour, has been created to give inputs to the planning process for the 12th Five Year Plan of India.

• A Central Cell on Migrant Workers has been established at the national level (MoLE), under the Director General, Labour Welfare.
• A Task Force on Migrant Workers has been constituted in MoLE to look at issues and challenges emerging from the project work and assessing the portability of schemes for such workers.
• Positive engagement with National Human Rights Commission and with the state governments on stricter implementation of the Bonded Labour Act and on surveys for identifying bonded labourers.
• An MOU has been signed among Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and MoLE (June 2012) and another among Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and MoLE (February 2013), to promote inter-state coordination for protection of migrant workers.
• Based on the migration corridors, an Inter-state Coordination Committee has been established in six states of India.
• In the six project states, a Plan of Action for convergence of central and state government resources, to prevent workers from slipping into bondage, has been developed, in consultation with the tripartite partners—the source state, the destination state and the central government.
• Building on the results achieved, Andhra Pradesh is planning to extend the project to other nearby districts as well as to stone quarries and stone crushers sector. A National-level Consultation was organised by the ILO in partnership with MoLE (8 October 2013), which brought together all the stakeholders on a common platform to discuss the future road map (According to the stakeholders, the step of providing a common platform has not been taken in the past 50 years). The state Minister for Labour publicly acknowledged the issue and urged all stakeholders to focus on the ILO-MoLE project approach, to prevent bondage and also to enhance enforcement, identification, release and rehabilitation of bonded labour. A way forward was discussed at the national level.
• To bring together the strengths of tripartite partners, civil society, academia, media and policy makers, the ILO has prepared the ground for setting up a National-level Forum on Bonded Labour—a network of networks, working on bonded labour, vulnerable groups, migrant workers and labour exploitation issues.

- State, District and Local Interventions

• At the state level, a State Coordination Cell for Migrant Workers was set up in the six states under the Chair of the Labour Commissioner for looking into inter-state/intra-state migration and workers vulnerable to bondage.
• For the first time, brick kiln workers of five states (Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Bihar) were included under the social security net through their inclusion into the Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board. This inclusion is under process in Odisha.
• The states have come up with special schemes for migrant workers (Jharkhand), rescue of migrant workers in distress (Chhattisgarh), mapping of migrant workers and awareness generation of workers at transit points (Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, Jharkhand), toll free helplines (Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh), etc.
• At the local level, District Facilitation Centres are being set up in select districts of the six states, to facilitate safe migration, promote registration of workers and access to government schemes. These centres are to work as ‘single-window access’ for migrant workers.
• Constitution/Reconstitution of vigilance committees, capacity building the members, panchayati raj institutions, capacity building on survey methodology for identification of the bonded labour are the other steps that have been taken.
• The ILO has also adapted the government’s Sankaran Guidelines into an updated tool for identification of bonded labour. This is now under pilot testing. This was done because the Supreme Court had observed that most states do not report bonded labour due to inadequate survey methodologies and poor implementation and because of the lack of understanding on how to use Sankaran Guidelines in practice. Some states requested ILO’s assistance to adapt the guidelines for use by their surveyors.
• Convergence Meetings have been organised, to facilitate coordination for access of services for men and women workers, children, adolescents and also the elderly/disabled.

- Capacity Building and Knowledge Sharing

• The project learnings have been shared with several non-project states (Karnataka, Punjab, Haryana, West Bengal, etc.), which are now showing interest. Some of the project states have also expressed the need for MoUs with additional states, for better and more coordinated action among them.
• The project has engaged with 12 central trade unions on the issue of forced labour and bonded labour through a series of training programmes for trainers/educators and field outreach workers. With this, the central trade unions have also taken up the issue of forced labour/bonded labour and migration challenges, as one of the priority areas of work.

- Social Dialogue

• The ILO initiated bi-partite and tri-partite dialogues, to deal with critical issues such as recruitment practices, minimum wages, enforcement of law, development of code of conduct for employers
• Recognition of ILO’s role as a neutral technical facilitator on a hitherto sensitive issue has assisted ILO’s tripartite constituents in replicating the convergence-based initiatives on prevention of vulnerabilities that lead to bondage in the six states.

WAY FORWARD

This project puts in place a structure, comprising multiple stakeholders across policies and programmes and across economic sectors, at the local, district, state and national levels, which links workers to their rights and entitlements under existing schemes. By strengthening the work environment, connecting the worker to policy and programme provisions and to the power of collective bargaining and unionisation, ILO’s strategy through the project is moving towards reducing vulnerability to bondage through promotion of decent work.