Labour groups lobby for workers’ insurance
MUMBAI: Despite over 93% of the country’s labour force working in the informal sector, the latter has no social security or employee benefits. In their fight to change this, the Working Peoples’ Coalition (WPC), a nationwide collective of unions, NGOS and labour experts, held a conference on Thursday with labour organisations, unions and government officials to discuss expanding the scope of the Employee State Insurance scheme (ESI) to all informal workers.
Bilal Khan, one of the organisers, said the ESI didn’t give just health insurance to workers but had many other benefits. “But right now, t he scheme is restricted to salaried employees in organisations with over ten workers and earning less than Rs 21,000 a month,” he said. To change this, WPC has been working to create welfare boards for informal workers, which will be the base to get them the benefits that come with formal employment.
This is not an easy task. “The ESI is a fund to which both workers and employers contribute,” explained Rajiv Khandelwal, vice-president of WPC and director of labour rights organisation Ajeevika Bureau. “The workers earn too little to be able to contribute. And in informal work, the employer is not always formally recognised or is even absent. Consider the case of domestic workers, waste-pickers or hawkers.”
In cases like IFAT, a gig workers’ union, the employer-worker relationship is clear-cut. Workers, such as drivers and delivery personnel, are employed by recognizable companies like Uber, Ola, Zomato, and Swiggy, simplifying the collection of employee cess from these companies, as explained by Khan.
Khan suggested that collecting ESI cess for construction workers through the BOCW welfare board, and municipal corporations could facilitate the process for categories like domestic workers and hawkers. Additionally, there were proposals to charge household appliance companies a cess for domestic workers.
During the conference, Anil Kumar Sahu, the Maharashtra ESIC Additional Commissioner and Regional Director said, “The central govt certainly wants to extend social security benefits to all workers, but the form this will take has not been decided yet.”
Ambolkar highlighted poor conditions in ESI hospitals despite substantial funding, while encouraging workers to enroll in ESI remains a challenge. Fifteen sectors of informal worker unions attended the conference. Khan mentioned the government’s focus on providing social security benefits for informal workers through initiatives like the e-shram portal.