Migrant workers replace local manpower in mills

There is no official data on the number of workers in Tamil Nadu, but activists say more school dropouts are turning their backs on the textile industry for jobs in better-paid sectors such as electronics.

“Children of textile workers are not going back to the mills to work,” said V Jeyaraman of the Anna Panchalai Thozhilalar Sangam union of powerloom workers, adding, “Education has changed things and opened better avenues for them. Local labour is no longer available.” 

S James Victor, director of the Serene Secular Social Service Society, which works to protect textile workers’ rights, said several villagers were not ready to send their wards to jobs in mills. “Girls opt for employment in the food processing industry instead,” Victor said.

India is one of the world’s largest textile and garment manufacturers. Many of the workers are trapped in debt bondage, face abuse or are forced to work long hours in poor conditions, campaigners say. Traditionally, the dyeing units, spinning mills and apparel factories were using the cheap labour from villages across Tamil Nadu.

More than 2,000 units employ an estimated 300,000 people, most of them young women from poor, illiterate and backward caste or “Dalit” communities, who are offered lump sum payments at the end of a threeyear period. The “Sumangali scheme” (happily married) was promoted as an easy way to obtain the hefty dowries families need to marry off daughters. But in July, the Madras High Court issued a directive demanding the state government abolish the scheme. 

“According to the government, the scheme has been scrapped, but migrants are being lured with similar promises,” Jeyaraman said. In India’s poorer states, workers can expect to be paid Rs 170 a day, while textile workers in Tamil Nadu are typically paid Rs 270 a day, campaigners say. 

“For want of local labour, the industry is hiring considerably more people from other states,” said K Venkatachalam, chief advisor to the Tamil Nadu spinning mills’ association. But he denied workers were being exploited and said they were being paid fairly. 

“The industry is not in good health and the migrant workers continue to bear the brunt of it,” he said.