CHENNAI: On Friday, the 150th day of their agitation, sanitation workers were detained in central Chennai after police blocked a planned march to submit a petition to Chief Minister MK Stalin. Road blockades and mass detentions followed, marking yet another clampdown on a protest that oscillated between city streets and police vans since August 1.

From around 10 am, over 1,000 workers from the Thiru Vi Ka Nagar and Royapuram zones gathered near Kuralagam amid heavy police deployment. As they attempted to proceed towards the Secretariat, they were stopped and detained. By noon, police buses had transported hundreds of workers to community halls across the city.

For the workers, the protest extends far beyond its 150-day duration. Many describe months of unstable work, lost wages and mounting uncertainty. Several say they have survived on borrowings and rotating hunger strikes, even as repeated detentions disrupted their lives. “They call sanitation an essential service, but they treat the workers as expendable,” said a worker detained on Friday.

The agitation began in July with a fast-unto-death against the outsourcing of sanitation work in Zones 5 and 6 by the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC). Workers say they were informally told not to report for duty, without written orders or assurances on absorption or pay. By August, hundreds had gathered outside the Ripon Building demanding job security, regular wages and permanency. The sit-in was forcibly cleared within weeks following court directions, but the protest only intensified.

“It is rare for a labour protest in Tamil Nadu to continue for 150 days,” said R Geetha of the Unorganised Workers’ Federation. She pointed to a 2006 Government Order issued under former Chief Minister M Karunanidhi, which mandated the regularisation of daily wage employees who had completed ten years of service as of January 1, 2006. “This is a valid protest. It is ironic that an order passed during the Kalaignar era is being ignored by the present DMK government,” she said.

Workers also invoke the long-recognised 485-day norm, which holds that continuous work beyond roughly two years removes the ‘temporary’ character of a job. “If it applies in the private sector, why is it ignored in government employment?” Geetha asked.

Instead of regularisation, sanitation work in Chennai has steadily moved towards outsourcing; introduced during MK Stalin’s tenure as Mayor, it expanded under the AIADMK government between 2011 and 2021. Workers argue that the current government has not reversed this trend despite assurances.

The shift is reflected in workforce figures. GCC currently employs 3,628 permanent sanitation workers, 415 nominal muster roll workers and 2,946 workers through self-help groups. In contrast, private contractors employ over 14,000 workers across the city.

In November, workers began rotating hunger strikes, with several women hospitalised after prolonged fasting. Over time, the central demand narrowed. After months of lost wages and repeated arrests, many have given up asking for permanency. “Now we only want to be taken back under the GCC self-help group system, so we are protected from erratic private contractors,” said Asraf Begum, a cleanliness worker.

Advocate Bharathi, president of the UUI, questioned the government’s priorities. “The government is spending Rs 186 crore on free meals. Bringing these workers back under GCC would cost nearly half that. Yet workers’ benefits are never prioritised,” he said.

The protest has become a struggle to assert that the work done every day cannot remain temporary forever. At its core lies a question the government has yet to answer: will long years of service lead to job security, or will the issue continue to be addressed primarily as a law-and-order problem rather than a labour dispute?