US-based Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), an independent labour rights monitoring organization focused on protecting the rights of workers, has released a 29-page report assessing India’s biggest apparel exporter, Shahi Exports. The report claims that mid-level professionals of the export house threatened and misbehaved with the workers, who were asking for increase in wages. There are many more serious allegations of abuse and violence on the managers of the company.
With a turnover of US $ 850 million (Rs. 5800 cr.) and nearly one lakh workers, Shahi Exports has more than 50 garment manufacturing units across India. This particular report is based on recent developments at one of the Bangalore based units of the company.
“An investigation by the WRC has found that in late March through mid-April 2018, the management of Shahi Exports engaged in a campaign of vicious repression and retaliation against workers’ exercise of fundamental labour rights – which included physical beatings; death threats; gender, caste, and religion-based abuse; threats of mass termination; and the expulsion from the factory of 15 worker activists. The violations occurred at Shahi’s Unit 8 factory in Bangalore, in the course of a deliberate effort by Shahi to repress the organization of a union at the factory and, relatedly, prevent an increase in garment workers’ wages,” the report reads.
The WRC claims to have prepared this report on the basis of interviews with more than 30 workers of Shahi Exports. Insisting on corrective action and remediation, the report demands that those workers who have been physically assaulted and suspended from their jobs must be allowed to return to work with full back pay, compensation for their injuries, pain, and suffering, and loss of personal property from the April 4 attack. In addition, the report demands a written apology from the company for the injustice.
It has also been demanded that those managers and supervisors, involved in such violations, either actively or by allowing such practices to occur on factory premises, must be meaningfully disciplined, before these employees, who were the victims of the violence and other abuses at the factory, return to work. Also, termination of all those identified, in this report, for directing or perpetrating physical violence or death threats against workers, has been sought.
Shahi Exports is quoted in the report as saying that Shahi management was not involved in the altercation. They claim that there was no physical attack from Shahi’s management and the altercation that occurred happened outside the factory and just between workers. It is further claimed that it was the suspended workers who initiated the violence and the management believes they were the aggressors.
Apparel Online Magazine (the print venture of Apparel Resources) had published a news regarding the same in its April 16-30th Edition – Workers ‘assaulted’; or was it a ‘group clash’ at Shahi Exports. Immediately after the WRC report, when Apparel Resources approached the management of Shahi Exports for their reaction and comment, an assurance was given for a quick response. An update will be provided on receiving the same.
