Workplace Sexual Harassment – are blue collar workers more vulnerable?

Stories of & inspired by real incidents 

Lewd comments, demands for sexual favours, constant proposition, retaliatory behaviours when complained about… these are all part and parcel of life for an Indian woman working in any industrial setting.

In a report by Deloitte, a staggering 195 million women are employed in the informal workforce [1]. India has, to safeguard their interests and stop exploitation, appropriately implemented stringent laws against Workplace Sexual Harassment in addition to other labour codes. However, the practical application and mechanism to help women become aware of the laws against sexual exploitation are surprisingly scanty to almost non-existent as you climb down the economic hierarchy. 

Are the working class easy targets?

Take the instance of Shalini*, a box packer working in a biscuit factory in Gurgaon who faced repeated propositions and lecherous behaviour from the factory’s security guard. She had to keep mum in the apprehension of being victim-blamed by the employer for the incidents and losing her job. Going to the police is usually not an option for women in these strata of society due to the likelihood of the police conducting insensitive lines of questioning. The security guard was quietly transferred when Shalini’s husband complained to the guard’s superior. In due course of the PoSH Law, his acts should have been subjected to proper inquiry by the Internal Committee (IC/ICC) of the factory and an appropriate punishment given if found guilty.

Poverty and fear of disgrace on their reputation force women in the blue collar workforce to “shut one’s eyes” and drag through another day.

There is no denying that the #MeToo Movement has brought in a tsunami of attention and visible change in how corporates deal with instances of Workplace Sexual Harassment behind swanky glass walls and air-conditioned workspaces. Still, it has had little to no effect [2] on the plight of women working in industrial and daily wages/gig sectors like Shalini, whose difficulties perhaps remain invisible to the employers. 

Based on a Real Incident: How far is too far?  

Working out of a supply factory in Tamil Nadu that supplied clothes to fast fashion brand H&M, Jeyasre Kathirvel, a 20-year-old Dalit woman, had been raped and brutally murdered on January 5, 2021[3]. An investigation into the matter brought to light that previously, Jeyasre had attempted to inform the authorities about the Sexual Harassment and intimidation she was facing at work. But they took no action. In addition, her supervisor, who confessed to abducting and murdering Jeyasre, had a long-standing history of sexually harassing employees.

• 1 in 7 women workers is forced to either commit a sexual act or to have sexual intercourse in garment factories across Bengaluru.
• 1 in 14 women has experienced physical violence in the workplace.
• 1 in 4 women feels unsafe at work.

Source – https://bit.ly/3PzdMaA

The misery of civic workers

With wages being backlogged for the last three months, Rathna and her fellow pourakarmikas (civic workers in Bengaluru) decided to approach their contractor Nagesh and ask for the dues to be cleared. Confronted with their legitimate request, he casually asked them to collect their dues from inside his pants. Boasting several criminal complaints already pending against him, he made it quite clear that he would not think twice about raping them if they dared to speak out. 

When he learnt that the pourakarmikas had filed a complaint at the Local Committee with the state’s administrative body, he assaulted 37 pourakarmikas and beat two of them with an iron rod, hurled casteist abuses, stripped publicly, made lewd gestures and threatened to shove the same iron rod in the workers’ private parts till it came out of their mouth [4].

This was not an isolated event. There have been other instances before where civic workers have been exposed to such inhuman behaviour. However, the perpetrator’s actions came out in the headlines this time due to the gravity of the situation. 

Whose responsibility are blue collar workers? 

In a study by Sister For Change, a non-profit organisation, disturbing statistics surfaced [5]. One of their reports talks about Twinkle (name changed), a 20-year-old unmarried garment worker. She was constantly being propositioned by her manager and threatened to be fired if she complained about him. When their livelihood is at stake, and the abuser has the power to terminate their only source of income, blue collar workers like her often bottle up the abuse for as long as they can. Ultimately unable to put up with it any further, Twinkle, with help from a union representative, filed a complaint with the company’s HR department. To her surprise, the department took no action on her behalf.

The study further points out that action is taken only on a meagre 3.6% of the complaints received, and not a single accused is ever convicted [6]. These are red flags.

This is what has failed

The PoSH Act, as mentioned previously, does exist on pen and paper. But, it is the people that the Act depends on to deliver justice that fail.

In addition to an Internal Committee (IC) that every organisation is mandated to have, a district administration is also supposed to set up a Local Committee (LC). The latter is for aiding women in organisations with less than ten employees and those in the unorganised sectors.

However, most of the time, like in the pourakarmikas’ or Twinkle’s case, either the IC is absent or fails to acknowledge the problem, or the victim is unaware of her right to receive redressal through an LC if at all it has been set up in the district. 

Safety of women in the gig economy –

The PoSH Act, 2013 was born out of sheer necessity to protect women in the informal sector. The Vishaka Guidelines, the backbone of the Act, have resulted in most companies refreshing their policies on Sexual Harassment of women at workplace, something that was previously unabashedly not cared about. Yet the rigour of upholding the anti-Sexual Harassment laws deflates when these organisations don’t diligently conduct awareness and sensitisation training for the blue collar employees, the gig and the contractual workers, probably because they belong to a weaker socio-economic stratum.

 A 2017 survey [7] conducted by the Indian National Bar Association covered over 6,000 employees to have a deeper understanding of how pervasive Sexual Harassment was in the workplace. The study found that most victims chose not to report Sexual Harassment to their superiors out of fear of retribution, embarrassment, lack of confidence in the complaint redressal mechanism and stigma. 

What was foremost of all these reasons was the fear of losing their job. As it is, women in the industrial/gig economy have to balance work and home under tremendous pressure and often fight their relatives to get a chance to earn their livelihood. In addition, if they bring up the problem of Sexual Harassment, which is still a taboo in our culture, the result is usually nothing short of victim-blaming and loss of work avenues.

When it came into existence, the PoSH Act was a revolutionary step towards an equal and progressive society. However, over the years, with poor penetration of training and awareness in the weaker economic stratum, the Law has failed the ones who are most susceptible to Sexual Harassment at the workplace. 

A free pass for predators of the ‘weaker’ sex? 

Given that blue collar workers tend to be silent and have a low awareness of their rights under the PoSH Law, management personnel would be foolish to believe that they can get away with not having checks and balances in place to prevent the exploitation of industrial/gig workers.

Hushed in the Parliament – 

In 2014, BVG India was a company responsible for housekeeping in the parliament. A woman working for them was repeatedly sexually harassed by her supervisor. On reporting the male harasser to her senior, who was also a woman, the housekeeping lady was sacked from her job temporarily and later transferred to the Lok Sabha [8].

Although initially, she struggled to have her complaint registered even with her direct employer, in the end, she chose to write a letter to the Lok Sabha speaker, which was duly taken up. The news became a headline in the week’s daily.

Apart from the bad press, the far bigger reason management should think thrice before hushing complaints of Sexual Harassment or not creating an IC is the penalties the PoSH Act prescribes and the Court’s award if found guilty of the above. 

Local Committee orders a Gurugram based Start-up director to pay 10.8 Lakh as compensation –

https://bit.ly/3zzqWyv

Penalty for non-compliance – Section 26

The Act imposes an initial penalty of up to INR 50,000 if the employer fails to constitute an IC under Section 4 of the PoSH Act. In case of subsequent convictions for the same offence, the penalty can be doubled in addition to the court’s discretion of imposing cost for damages or compensation for the victim. In certain cases, the organisation further stands to lose its licence or registration to do business or activity as per Section 26 of the PoSH Act. 

Time for action in the industrial sector/gig economy – 

As observed in most cases of Sexual Harassment in the blue collar workforce, the victims either fail to identify the perpetrator’s behaviour as Sexual Harassment or are unaware of their rights and remedies.

For those unaware, it is both a legal mandate and an expected moral responsibility of any employer to put up notices in visible spaces around the workplace displaying the penal consequences of Sexual Harassment & the Section 4 Order constituting the IC.

In addition, holding awareness sessions on matters of Sexual Harassment (preferably by a female member to address women in Industrial settings) in the local language for the organisation’s blue collar workers and their supervisors is vital for creating an ethical and safe workspace.

As a basic principle, the program should explain topics such as identifying quid pro quo and hostile work environments, consequences and protection from retaliatory behaviours, a complaint redressal procedure, how to use it and other internally available rights. 

With a little help from us –

Rainmaker understands you have a business to run, and it may not always be possible to run down to all your factories and hold awareness sessions weekly, monthly or, for that matter, quarterly.

But as you may already know, the PoSH Act mandates every workplace with ten or more employees to have certain safeguards in place. These include regular awareness & sensitization sessions for all employees and the constitution & training of IC. Rainmaker’s expertise in handling PoSH-related matters is one of the best in India.

Rainmaker has also created India’s first OTT-like online training module, WorkSafe Industrial, that is engaging, easy to understand and can be made available in multiple regional languages for easy grasp of blue collar workers. Watch the trailer here – https://bit.ly/3cBlPVA

Contact us today for more information. 

* Shalini is a fictional character & the incident narrated in her story draws inspiration from various accounts of sexual misconduct that factory workers have reportedly faced. 

Author: Sagnik Mukherjee Editor: Sumali Nagarajan

References – 

1. https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/economy/95-per-cent-women-in-india-involved-in-unpaid-labour-63517
2. https://www.marthafarrellfoundation.org/uploads/pdf_files/1555302838_RTI%20Study%20PDF.pdf
3. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/feb/01/worker-at-hm-supply-factory-was-killed-after-months-of-harassment-claims-family 
4. https://bengaluru.citizenmatters.in/civic-workers-protest-in-Bengaluru-against-abuse-21826 https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/seven-held-sexually-harassing-b-luru-civic-workers-bbmp-contractor-large-70311
5. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/why-women-contract-workers-are-among-the-most-vulnerable-to-sexual-harassment-at-work/articleshow/61313168.cms?from=mdr
6. Ibid
7. https://www.hindustantimes.com/delhi/most-women-still-don-t-report-sexual-harassment-at-work-study/story-8Efvy12aScvKBsAkoAxy2I.html  
8. https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/a-womans-cry-goes-unheard-in-parliament/article7198983.ece

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