Contract Worker Deaths-Does that indicate a 'Class Conflict' problem

Contract Worker Deaths – Does that indicate a ‘Class Conflict’ problem?

A couple of years back, I joined Twitter and had an exchange with a renowned author re-positioning himself as an Intellectual.

His question on Twitter was – “Why is it that a nation that has always had low safety standards for factories, resulting in gas leaks and fires, now has high standards in its fight against one disease? Is it the fame of a sexy pandemic or are we beginning to be a better nation with a high value for life?”

This Tweet was at the initial stages of the pandemic in 2020 with the visible panic and the subsequent actions that every company was taking in the country.

My response (and I must admit that a little bit of trolling of wannabe celebrity intellectuals is great fun): “Zimble. Anything impacting rich gets attention, rest doesn’t matter. When CEOs start dying in accidents, it will get the same attention. Elementary, Dr. Watson”.

While it was fun trolling, my own response made me think. Is the hypothesis that if members of top management were to start getting hurt in accidents in factories and construction sites, the focus on industrial safety would be higher, correct? Is there a class conflict at play here?

During the pandemic, CEOs and top management across all companies were driving their HR and Admin teams in an intense manner. Leading from the front, reviewing policies, allowing people to work from home, creating medical and other support facilities, compensating during illness or death, contributing to PM Cares, etc. was fascinating to observe. They truly made a difference to their employees. Most employees were touched by the concern and the actions that followed.

When we observe the effort from the lens of safety culture, we can clearly see that management was willing to sacrifice ‘production’ for safety i.e. willing to lose effectiveness with work from home situations to ensure safety of employees. This would get them very high marks in any safety culture assessment.

But then, what explains the high degree of apathy to the deaths and serious accidents that happen in factories and construction sites? Most deaths in the same companies are of the lowest in the chain – the contract workers. The unsaid, unheard people, not even worthy of being called employees and referred to by other terms such as extended workforce, third-party employees, etc. No one in the company knows their names and their death is simply a statistic. And sometimes not even a statistic. Try getting data on the number of deaths in industrial accidents in a year and you will be surprised at the difficulty. Data is massively underreported or not available at all. The uncomfortable truth: it is probably easy to get away with underreporting.

None of us would be surprised that contract workers face the brunt. All of us have attended construction sites, employee events, social events. Just walk around for a few minutes before any event or at a construction site and we will see the poorest of the poor, working at heights to set up the event infrastructure without any safety equipment. Speak to the contractor and he would dismiss your concern. And should the worker die, there would be a paltry compensation provided. Most contract workers’ families would not even know the process to get the compensation.

What explains this apathy? Is it the distance of the hierarchy between the top and the low paid contract worker that makes us insensitive? Is it that we are truly not able to feel the pain that our processes, actions (or lack of it) and approach to business cause? Or do we not feel accountable enough? Or is that that we don’t know how to solve the problem by training, process, culture? ?

Or is it indicative of a class struggle since the need for contract workers is dictated by 1) costs 2) ease of terminating a contract with a company as compared to the contract of an individual worker 3) sometimes, specialization.

Is the right of the lowest worker for a safe environment in conflict with profitability?

The class struggle argument is based on the hypothesis that contract worker deaths happen due to the apathy caused by their status as non-employees, that there is a rich-poor divide.

Or maybe, it is not a class struggle.

The exemplary behavior and approach of top management during the pandemic is confusing. Top management cares but perhaps the boundary of the care is limited to our definition of who our employees are. Despite legislation, the poor and faceless contract worker is not part of our definition of the employee or extended workforce.

We are simply not being inclusive enough and therefore don’t approach the problem with the same intensity that we approached the pandemic.

It has always struck me, that the Trade Union Act was legislated in 1926 but the Factories Act that deals with safety of workers was only passed in 1948. The role of many trade unions in not demanding safety standards in a more pushy and aggressive way has been surprising. Limiting their role to the welfare of the internal employees – their constituents – but not the contract workers has been a great disservice to their role.

In our desire for cheap/inexpensive labor and despite legislation, we have perpetuated a situation that allows the contract worker to face the brunt of safety problems. We have not been measured on our changes and efforts on the safety of contract workers. We have been able to get away with a sub-optimal focus on contract workers in contrast to our efforts to build an engaged workforce comprising of our ‘regular/on-roll/FTE’ employees.

?But there is hope!

While legislation has had limited impact, the push for compliance on ESG norms and the expectations of the consumers and market may well create a change. Workplace Safety has about 15% weightage in ESG metrics and this may help push for a greater inner accountability to work on real change on the safety of contract workers. The share market will increasingly reward companies that do well on ESG.

Profit may therefore, eventually force us to focus on our safety culture efforts with the contractor worker in perspective. Will negate the class argument, hopefully!

Will be great to hear your views!

Ravi Parmeshwar

[email protected]

www.simultassolutions.com