Even before the Adani Group took over a cement factory in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand, employment was precarious. Advocates for workers’ rights say that they have had a constant battle to ensure that cement workers at the factory receive decent conditions, appropriate wages and payments to their retirement funds.
On 15 May 2022, for US $10.5 billion, Adani bought out the share of a Swiss company (Holcim) in a large Indian cement business – the Ambuja and ACC Company. It now owns 56.6% of the company. ACC has been mining and manufacturing cement in Jhinkpani since the company was formed in 1936 when eleven cement companies merged to form the single entity of Associated Cement Companies.
For the informal workers of Jhinkpani, the Adani takeover has not provided security of employment.
I
Nara (name changed) is a quick-talking labourer and labour organiser of the Jharkhand General Mazdoor Union. For 25 years, he has worked as a loader in the factory, though these days he is lucky to be offered one day’s work out of ten.
The subject of displacement is brought up and Nara points out that the ACC company first took land in the time of British rule and never paid a single peasant farmer a single rupee, that when the farmers became labourers they struggled day after day to find work, to keep their jobs, and to ensure that the company contributed to their retirement funds. Now, since the takeover by Adani in 2022, only around 600 people retain secure jobs out of the previous 2500; others are dependent on the vicissitudes of contract work.
‘We always called it the Asli Chutiya Company’, Nara said (this would translate to Actual Fucker’s Company.) ‘We had to strike to get a canteen, we had to strike when deaths occurred in the workplace, we had to struggle to get some compensation for our lost lands. Our bonuses were also shut down. We had to go to Delhi to seek the support of the government and then the bonus was reinstated.’
Since 2022, a majority of the contractors have been laid off, and employment at the factory became precarious. It had already been precarious because of the nature of contract labour, but a worker like Nara, who used to work 7 days or 10 days now would get work only for a single day. A large portion of the factory is lying empty. Where there would be hundreds of motorcycles and bicycles, there is nothing but a cobra under the cracks, where this correspondent had a meeting with a group of five workers from the company.
‘After Adani came, things were turned upside down. We used to earn around 3000 rupees a month, now one merely gets 1000.’
‘First they used to make clinkers, now they are only making cement.’
‘I used to get maybe 8000 rupees a month, now barely 2000-3000, less than the minimum wage.’
‘Some months I used to get 12,000 rupees, or 10,000 rupees,’ said another worker.
‘They even have all the documents of our Provident Fund. We don’t have access to it.’
‘How much would it be?’
‘It is 12% of our wages, and we’ve worked for twenty-twenty five years, so how much would that be? We will file a case if they don’t give it.’
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When asked if any local journalist has ever written about their struggles or their union, he says no one ever has. When asked how many years he has been organising, he says he is growing old fighting the company. Even his father worked for the company. All the contractors always worked in favour of the ACC company, he says, and when they were removed, they started crying.
They said they will continue their struggle on the streets and in front of the factory, but they won’t go to the labour court, because they might get a bad order.
They claim they were managing fine during the coronavirus period, but when Adani took over the company, the phrase, ‘dama-dor’ was used, meaning ‘discharged due to medical advice’, and when this correspondent clarified, he said, ‘they terminated the workers’ employment. They were given no notice when the company stopped giving them work. They don’t know the name of the manager who ran the whole operation. The managers don’t even talk to the workers.'
‘We ask our leaders to call them, to call the personnel manager, but they never come.’
Now they manage by doing any work around the village, or work in the fields, or go from contract labour to informal labour, or to becoming farmers again. To do whatever work they can get from the village. Their demand is that their back-wages that were withheld should be paid to them.
‘If Adani doesn’t give our cases due consideration, then we will continue with (inquilab zindabad) – long live the revolution.’
II
John Miran Munda is a politician and popular labour leader from Jhinkpani. He ran as an independent from Keonjhar in the neighbouring Odisha district in the recent Lok Sabha elections and got around 32,000 votes, coming fourth behind the BJP, the Biju Janata Dal and the Congress. Throughout the region, there are slogans written on the walls asking for rights for workers and Adivasi (indigenous people), and for releasing him from prison. He has been repeatedly arrested and bailed on numerous charges. He remains a popular leader among the workers and Adivasis.
Locals refer to Munda as someone who is always wandering the region. If he sees a school being constructed he will go and talk to the workers to ask if they are getting their rights. He is a target of the administration and the companies, but when asked if he is scared of threats of violence he responds calmly, ‘you need a heart.’ And after a pause he says, ‘I am not scared.’
The Jharkhand General Kamgar Union started in 2007 in the Latehar district of Jharkhand, and Munda joined it in 2009, being an independent labour organiser in Jhinkpani from his early 20s.
When it came to the Jhinkpani workers, he was categorically straightforward: ‘There were over 2500 workers working in the factory and now there are barely 600. Even they have no guarantee of work.’
‘Around seven or eight years ago, the [limestone] mine shut down because of illegal mining,’ Munda said, and went on to allege that ‘the company continued to mine illegally until the 2020s, when the [newly elected] Jharkhand Mukti Morcha government came down hard on them.’
‘The project site is now closed; it used to make cement clinkers.’
‘Their target is to mechanise.’
‘They’ve removed all of the militant workers. And the permanent workers are scared of us.’
‘We must have gone on strike around 15-20 times, we went on strike for the wage board, which was only 170 rupees per day. We wanted 500 rupees but they raised it to 400 rupees, this was in 2011. We went on strike to improve the canteen. There was corruption in the Provident [retirement] Fund, and the contractors were caught up in that. Right now, they are giving the loaders 850 rupees a shift, and we are arguing that the unloaders should also get 850 rupees.’
‘We have nothing to tell Adani. What message there is will come through the Labour Department; it will come through the Administration. Adani will not talk to people like us; they will work with the government, and we will work through the laws.
‘We will say that the peasant farmers should get jobs, that there be a ‘dobara samjhauta’, another settlement, with the peasant farmers whose lands you will work on. Give them compensation and jobs.’
When asked if they are removing workers from his union because of its militancy, John responded, ‘it could be anything.’
‘This is happening not just in Jhinkpani; this is happening everywhere.’
Documents obtained by this correspondent show that in meetings between the union and government officials, even the Sub-Divisional Officer [a senior government official] would express frustration at the behaviour of ACC officials who wouldn’t show up.
‘In ACC, the Cement Board wages should be given, which is around 1200 rupees, but now they are giving only the minimum wage.’
‘In the Cement Board rules for the workers, the ACC follows none of the laws,’ Munda alleged.
The union stated that ‘the ACC management is not paying the wages determined by the wage board to the workers deployed for loading and unloading work in the factory.’
‘It was also decided in the meeting that the ACC management and the unorganised labour union of Jinkapani would continue to provide medical facilities to the workers as before.’
Today the ‘Wellness Center of Adani’ (the local medical facility) is locked and empty on a Friday afternoon. So is the Rural Development Center across the road.
‘When the hospital itself is a patient, why would there be patients there?’ laughed Nara, the organiser.
The hospital will merely take the patient to another town if there is an accident.
