Bombay HC orders civic body to give permanent status to 2,700 workers

The HC upheld the tribunal’s order, directing the municipality to treat 2,700 employees as permanent employees. A trade union representing workers engaged in solid waste management, the Kachra Vahtuk Shramik Sangh, had made a case on their behalf before the industrial tribunal in Mumbai.

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The tribunal order directed the civic body to extend all benefits and grant permanency to the workers once they completed 240 days in service.

The workers had been labelled “mere volunteers” by the civic body. The High Court, stating that setting aside the tribunal’s order would be “a travesty of justice”, asked for its order to be implemented within three months.

“The corporation is under a mandate to keep the city clean and the residents of the city have a fundamental right to a clean environment.

This cannot be achieved by subjugating the fundamental rights of the workers to basic human dignity. The anxiety to find innovative ways to maintain a clean city can be understood, but in a welfare state, cleanliness for one class of citizens cannot be achieved by engaging in ‘slavery’ of the others,” observed Justice N M Jamdar.

According to the High Court, these 2,700 workers, working round the year, provided the foundation on which Mumbai functions. Instead of acknowledging their importance and giving them stability of permanent tenure to help improve their living conditions, the BMC a public body, had taken advantage of its position to exploit them, the court said.

Pointing to the fact that such workers were on duty throughout the year, barring four days, Justice Jamdar added, “One does not have to go through years of such sub-human existence to complain of exploitation.Their extreme backwardness tied up with the caste system, the lowly menial work they are forced to engage into by a public body which is bound to follow the ideals of the Constitution of India, makes the case of the workers concerned unique and cannot be compared to any other contract labour dispute.”

The High Court orders means that these workers are to be declared permanent workers of the corporation. They will get benefits on par with other permanent staffers.

“These 2,700 workers are working shoulder to shoulder with 28,000 odd permanent workers engaged in keeping the city clean. While the permanent workers are accorded all the facilitates and security of tenure, the working and living conditions of the concerned workers are pitiable. The way they have to live, the manner in which they are made to work is below human dignity. Many have no permanent shelter, hardly any access to medical treatment, washrooms, toilets, changing rooms, which facilities the permanent workers enjoy. If they get injured on duty while handling the garbage, develop illnesses, they are left to fend for themselves, with almost no medical care. They have to manually remove excrement, rotting animals, ride on the trucks carrying garbage, rotting carcasses,” said the court.

A V Bukhari, senior advocate for the municipality, had argued that no documents had been produced to show that these workers were employed by the civic body.

The corporation’s case was that these workers were not carrying out the same job as regular workers. They were working as part of its special cleanliness drive of sweeping and cleaning through cooperative societies and NGOs shortlisted by inviting tenders.

Meanwhile, Sanjay Singhavi, appearing for the trade union, said that the workers were in fact and in law the workers of the municipal corporation and they had been termed contract workers only to deprive them of the benefits of permanency.