Workers’ Struggle at Paharpur Cooling Towers

The following translation is an account of the workers’ struggle at Paharpur Cooling Towers factory (company tagline: An ISO 9001 company), located along Diamond Harbour Road, Kolkata, West Bengal. The original Bengali article was written by Partha Koyal spanning three visits - it has been translated by Koel Das, Sanhati.

12th June 2009

One of Asia’s largest cooling tower companies, Paharpur Cooling Towers, put up a notice of suspension of works on June 5th 2009, in the premises of its Vasa factory, located along Diamond Harbour Road.

On 12th June, workers could be seen camping in the factory. There has been an ongoing tussle between the management and workers over salary hikes for the last few months. The contract between the management and the permanent workers’ union, Paharpur Workmens’ Union, expired in the month of August 2007. There has been no new contract till date. The union has 128 members. The union for the floating and casual workers, Paharpur Cooling Tower Workers’ Union, was scheduled to have their new contract starting from 2008 November. 96 workers of this union work as casual workers for Soumya Enterprise Agency. Floating workers comprise of 117 people for Suraj Enterprise and 45 for Mandal Enterprise.

From the union of casual workers

Srikanta Naskar started as a helper back in 1993. Gradually, he was promoted to mixing operator in the sheet line machine and currently works in spot welding machine. He is the editor of the union of casual workers. According to him, their work load is almost similar to the permanent workers and related to the direct production. The salary hike of all these workers (permanent, casual, floating) was on hold due to the delay of the new contract. So, they have been protesting peacefully during the lunch break for the last few months.

A joint committee was formed with 6 members from the permanent workers’ union, and 4 from the casual one, along with local Trinamul Congress leaders from outside in order to discuss these issues with the management. The committee met with the management 6-7 months back. Normally, the factory demanded 70% utilization from the workers in order to be eligible for salary. The management demanded new condition of 90% utilization. There have been quite a few meetings after that. The management agreed to provide a CTC (hike including ESI+PF+Bonus) of Rs. 1300 if the production was increased. But production may be hampered due to power cut and various other factors including unavailability of material, unforeseen problems with machine tools, and unavailability of manpower. The management refused to pay attention to any of these details. In the mean time, the workers agreed to give 72-73% utilization. The management said that A, B and C grade workers will get Rs. 2250 provided they give 100% utilization. This took place about 2 months back.

Recent struggle against management over salary raise

The workers told that they are not going to take overtime and incentive if the salaries were not raised. The management distributed a leaflet on 2-3rd June which even talked about worker layoff and no salary hikes using the pretext of recession citing examples of Hind Motors and others. On 4th June, the workers demanded a clarification from the management regarding this issue. They demanded that the management come down to the workers for a direct dialog. In the evening of 4th, the management issued show cause notice to 4 workers. This lead to resentment among workers. The management said that there had been a mistake and they would negotiate the next day. But the very same day, 18 additional show cause notices were issued and the reason cited was low production.

The shop supervisor, however, has clarified that production is on schedule. On 5th June, the workers found out that apart from the above 22 workers, 23 more workers were handed show cause notice. The remaining workers entered the factory and some workers refused to accept the show cause notice handed to them. The management cut power around 9 a.m. and stopped the scheduled payment of salary the next day.

Outsourcing

I came to know that the management had been involved in outsourcing for quite some months. Work was being outsourced as it is more profitable than being produced in the factory. It takes almost 6 months to procure the raw material after getting an order, but the workers are being blamed for production delays. Workers were being forced to produce non-standard jobs which will not be counted towards utilization. This is how the management has been systematically making the factory sick. And now comes the suspension of work.

Workers are camping at the factory gate and taking out processions from time to time.

11th July 2009

The earlier exuberant activity near the factory seemed to have ebbed. After the suspension of work notice was issued on 6th June, a few workers’ camps were set up and one such camp used to have bicycles of workers, water tank, cooking vessels etc, but now it has none of those. The camp on the other side of the road still remains, but there is no one inside. There is a camp about 100-150 m from the factory gate, where four people were playing cards. I sat in the bench in front of the camp and asked them why they were so far away from the factory premises. They told me that section 144 had been issued by the court. The company was going to take out two truck-loads of material. One of the workers remarked that the law was only for the rich. They continued playing cards and a couple of workers from nearby assembled in the camp.

Two factory workers, Shubho and Nirmal were lying down on a makeshift bed. I came to know from them that the labor commission was supposed to have met the previous Monday. Representatives from permanent, casual and floating workers, local MLA and two people from the management were to be present in the commission. But the company stated that no decisions could be taken unless the workers agree to their terms. The workers were not prepared to capitulate to such a demand. The management then claimed that the owner was out of town. A couple of days passed, and there was still no news. There is a meeting scheduled on 15th July with the management. The discussion will be continued then.

Hunger and poverty forced the workers to look for jobs elsewhere. So the workers got jobs in nearby places - contract jobs with irregular payment. Mr. Haldar is one such worker. He worked in a neighboring factory for 7 days and had not yet received payment. He was supposed to get paid today. Mr. Halder inquired about food, to which another worker replied that it was not feasible to cook for so few workers.

In the meantime, another worker arrived from Nungi. It costs Rs. 24 both ways to get here from Nungi. The transportation fare of Rs. 24 is equivalent to two days food. Nowadays 4/5 workers keep vigil at night. But they cannot stop the raw material from being exported. The contractmen workers’ union’s election is on 22nd July. People are hopeful that with the help of the MLA, they can enter the factory premises before that. They told me that by the time of my next visit, the factory gate should be opened.

25th July 2009

I got down from the bus near the factory entrance. After section 144 was issued, the camp that had been set up away from the factory gate was empty.

I spotted Mr. Halder across the campsite and he said that the workers need to somehow make the owner agree to let them enter the factory premises. Mr. Halder also told us that the neighboring factory, Century Ply, was also beginning to have contract related resentments. Furthermore, GPI had also reduced their salary. Workers’ Union leader Pradip Ray arrived on the scene. His wife was not well and he was tired from searching for a tractor for farming all morning. According to Mr. Halder, unless the leaders talk directly with the owners, there is no chance of the factory re-opening. Mr. Ray said that the labor commission had called the owner, but he did not show up. The labor commissioner was pretty upset with the management. The labor commissioner told the management to make their decisions by last Monday, 20th July, but there has been no news from their side till date.

Somnath is a worker of this factory. He rents a place locally. It has been almost two months since the factory closed down. He is unhappy, his patience is running thin and he wants the factory to re-open anyhow. Another worker said that the owner must face the music and suggested to organize road jam and police involvement if necessary. Mr. Ray said what needed was to demonstrate in front of Ms. Mamata Banerjee’s place. Then Ms. Banerjee will ask the leaders why nothing has been done till now and its repercussion will be felt on other factories too. The owner will be forced to show up.

Across the road, a few workers were grinning about an incident in the labor commission. Apparently the labor commissioner had wanted to know from the management what exactly “100% utilization” meant. The management did not have an answer.

A permanent worker arrived. He said that the owner had taken out 18 truck-loads of material in one day in place of the court-agreed order of 2 truck-loads. There was nobody to stop this. The discussion then turned to the workers’ struggle against the owners here during the nineties. The owners were unable to remove campsites from the factory gates back then. One person from Hyde road in the Majherhat area informed the others that Paharpur had bought a shade near his place. There had been rumors of a new factory being built. Overall, the workers were at a loss about their next plan of action.

They were hoping that the leaders along with the workers will engage in a larger protest movement.

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The contact details of management are available here : http://www.paharpur.com/contact.html , for readers who might want to call them up or write them an email.