How Safe Are Workers in India’s Automotive Industry?
On March 16, 2024, a blast at a Lifelong India Private Limited unit in Dharuhera industrial cluster in the Rewari district of Haryana injured 40 workers, 16 of whom have since succumbed to their injuries and died.
This particular factory manufactures components such as plastic injection moulded parts and aluminium pressure die casted parts. It also does the assemblies thereof, which are used in automobiles, electronics, batteries etc.
Its buyers are some of the leading global brands such as General Motors, Hero Motor Corps, Exide, Panasonic, LeGrand, amongst others. The cause, identified in a preliminary investigation report by the state authorities, was a spark spreading to the dust collector, used during the buffing operations, which collects hazardous fine metal dust and was inadequately maintained and cleaned.
A blast at a Lifelong India Private Limited unit in Dharuhera industrial cluster in the Rewari district of Haryana injured 40 workers, 16 of whom have since succumbed to their injuries and died.
Following the accident, a currently ongoing study on occupational safety and health rights of workers in the automotive industry in Haryana was undertaken by the authors. Here we present excerpted fieldnotes.
Regulatory mechanisms galore
It is a well-known conundrum, even if it is not often spoken about, among professionals working towards social sustainability in global supply chains that there is an abundance of regulatory mechanisms to ensure workers welfare but their implementation is glaringly bad.
This begs the question— do the overlaps of regulation— across domains of national and international, State and non-state policies, conventions and laws— reinforce and strengthen each or do they become a means of evading accountability and compromising workers’ and human rights.
Thus, for example, the occupational safety and health of the Indian automotive industry workers is wrought within multiple regulatory frameworks such as, the Eighth UN Sustainable Development Goal, International Labour Organisation (ILO)’s Centenary Declaration Para II.D. and III.B., Principle 3 of National Guidelines for Responsible Business Conduct of Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Government of India; fundamental rights and directive principles of the Indian Constitution enshrined in the Factories Act of 1948 or Employee State Insurance Act of 1948, along with non-State, non-judicial mechanisms such as management standards of OHSAS 18001 or ISO 45001: 2018 or a variety of supplier codes of conducts or sustainability compliances of international brands and companies.
Though these provide differing standards of safe working conditions, inspections, audit regimes and enforcement mechanisms for regulation, prevention and remediation of occupational hazards, a non-compliance and violation of one is, in most cases, that of many.
However, what is curious is that such overlaps which, in principle, can strengthen regulatory frameworks across domains, in reality, work together to aggravate the shortcomings of each until what we are left with is a lacuna of regulation and a severely vulnerable ‘precariat’.
Lifelong precarity at Dharuhera
This is illustrated by one of the first interviews that we conducted with an ex-worker of Lifelong India Pvt Ltd in Dharuhera. He had been recently called from his village by the labour contractors and management of the factory as a significant chunk of workers resigned in the aftermath of the accident and the factory was facing a labour shortage.
When asked about the accident, he informed us, “I am unaware of the accident as I was not here… Thankfully, I had suffered a leg injury three months ago working in the same line where the blast occurred and I had gone to my village.
“A bin placed behind me fell on me and my leg got stuck in the machine. Otherwise, I would also be in the factory and would probably be dead today. Now, I have been called by the contractor but I do not feel like rejoining the factory where my friends died.”
When asked about whether such incidents are a common occurrence in the factory, he replied that his was a particularly grave injury but usually, minor injuries are common (“choti moti chotein lagti rehti hain”).
When asked about whether such incidents are a common occurrence in the factory, he replied that his was a particularly grave injury but usually, minor injuries are common (“choti moti chotein lagti rehti hain”).
On being asked what these ‘minor injuries’ are, he informed us of workers losing their fingers in the power presses and other machines.
As the Future of Work in the Automotive Industry by the ILO informs us, this ‘industry of industries’ is one of the most hazardous in the world, surpassing even mining and basic chemicals manufacturing in the dangers it poses to workers’ life and limb.
Organisations such as Safe In India have highlighted that losing fingers is one of the most common injuries which affects the automotive workers in India and have also highlighted that this occupational hazard is more pronounced for migrant workers who hail from marginalised backgrounds of caste, gender, religion and region.
They are mostly the ones who are employed as contractual, unorganised workers, usually unskilled or inadequately skilled for working hazardous machines and processes.
During our fieldwork, when we asked whether the company provides these workers with any safety and health hazards trainings or instructions, the workers informed us that the only instruction from the management on the machines is how much output thy should be ideally producing in a day and how the workers must make sure that the machines do not ‘stop’ in between the change of shifts.
One of the ways of making sense of the contradiction between the abundance and inefficacy of regulatory mechanisms was provided to us in a discussion that sparked off during our field visits.
The workers argue that the normalisation of unsafe and hazardous working conditions must be seen in relation to the precarity that they face in other domains of life.
This is symptomised by the absence of effective worker voice and lack of participation in co-creating implementable solutions for decent working conditions in the factories.
Thus, one of them informed us that normally the system of shift rotation works such that until the workers in the subsequent shift do not enter and start work on the machines, the earlier shift of workers are not allowed to go by the management.
The justification provided is that the machines, once they turn off, take a lot of time to start and ‘heat’ up. This leads them to often keep working for over 14 hours a day usually, and occasionally, even over a day!
Another worker highlighted that the factory has employed contract workers on abysmally low piece rates (the amount was ₹0.5 per bike handle that is buffed!) so that the workers are forced to accept long working hours to earn a living to meet their subsistence costs.
On being asked what these ‘minor injuries’ are, he informed us of workers losing their fingers in the power presses and other machines.
Another example given was of the time when the factory management issued a blanket prohibition on getting mobile phones to work when one of the workers had suffered an injury during work, making it a matter of the workers collective negligence and evading its own responsibility of providing safe working conditions.
In fact, on the day of the blast itself, the workers alleged that a number of them were not allowed to leave the factory premises even after having completed their daily targets and were made to wait in the factory until the next shift of workers arrived, which led to the deaths of quite a few.
For the workers, the normalisation of unsafe and hazardous working conditions is unambiguously the expression of the arbitrary power that the ‘factory’ enjoys because of the absence of their collective voice.
Long working hours, high production targets, low remunerations and other disciplinary measures exist and persist because of the workers inability to negotiate.
This inability is not organic. Rather, it is instituted by the ‘factory’ which has, on multiple occasions and through several means, curbed any attempt by the workers to collectively represent themselves and their interests on the shop floor.
So much so that the ‘factory’ or the ‘company’, as it is framed within the workers discourses, is a distinctly antagonistic entity, pitted against their interests.
“Company ko toh production se matlab hai, chahe main karu ya koi aur” (the company only cares about the output irrespective of who produces it), one hears as a colloquialism from many workers when probed on why do they not complain about unsafe working conditions.
Anecdotes of retrenchment or ‘blacklisting’ from the entire industrial cluster whenever anyone raised such concerns are part of the workers’ collective memory.
A larger problem
Symptomatically, this incident exemplifies one of the biggest problems that plagues production in the global supply chains, generally, and that of the automotive industry, in particular, in India.
The automobile sector as a whole contributes around 7 percent to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of India, of which 2.3 percent comes from the auto components manufacturing sector. In terms of manufacturing GDP of India, the sector contributes between 35–49 percent. The industry has contributed to India being counted as one of the five biggest players in the global automotive industry.
Cumulatively, the automotive sector employs over 25 million workers directly or indirectly.
Though a majority of the production, in terms of supply chain integration, is nationally oriented; a significant integration of the auto components manufacturing sector with the global value chain with a surplus of US $700 million in favour of exports was recorded in 2022–23.
The exports are expected to increase to US $30 billion in 2026 from the current US $19 billion. Haryana, and specifically its Gurgaon–Manesar–Bawal belt, is the biggest automotive industrial hub of India, where this incident occurred.
The workers argue that the normalisation of unsafe and hazardous working conditions must be seen in relation to the precarity that they face in other domains of life.
However, the growth of the automotive industry in India, and specifically, Haryana, has been ridden with industrial conflicts, as Tom Barnes has brilliantly captured in his book, Making Cars in New India.
Ironically, one of the major points of escalation of conflict in the Haryana automotive industry, a decade ago, was collectivisation. Ironic because despite such a history and such precarity of the workforce, the concerns of workers rights and a sustainable automotive supply chain are still given a backseat in policy documents such as Automotive Mission Plan, 2016–26 or the Automobile Components Manufacturers’ Association, 2023 report titled Mobility 360°: Sustainability for Competitiveness.
The suggestions by the workers during our field visit that the concerns of occupational health, safety and hazards cannot be effectively tackled without workers participation and collectives reverberates the opinions and experiences of many scholars, practitioners and case-studies from around the world.
If the labyrinth of regulatory mechanisms functions adversely for the workers wellbeing by aggravating the shortcomings in each, practitioners working towards socially sustainable supply chains must highlight and advocate the strengths in each level of regulatory mechanisms.
With specific regards to strengthening the occupational health and safety rights of the Indian industrial workers through means of collective participation, we find one such tool in the Factories Act of 1948, whose effective implementation and non-dilution may be the foremost agenda of development practitioners concerned with social sustainability in global value chains related to India.
As a statute, it is a comprehensive regulation which spans from detailing the safety provisions such as fencing the machines to mandating creches, bathrooms, spittoons and other facilities and mandating maintenance rosters. It provides many other safeguards, from maintaining adequate records of workers health to thorough inspections by the State authorities.
However, key for our purpose are its provisions for workers participation through their representation in safety committees and their right to raise grievances against unsafe and hazardous working conditions and robust procedures for the disposal of such complaints.
Further, more than the immediate supplier and factory management, such incidents reflect poorly on their buyers and brands at the top of the supply chains.
Though claiming conscientiousness through supplier codes of conducts and sustainable supplier selection processes, the industrial units have often been criticised for having inadequate mechanisms of inspection, follow-up, enforcement and sustainable supplier development process that would capacitate those lower in the supply chain to institute socially sustainable practices. This is specifically the case with automotive global supply chains.
Lessons to draw
Drawing lessons from other industries, such as the garment sector and textiles, which have implemented agreements like the ACCORD on fire and building safety in Bangladesh from 2013 and the Dindigul Agreement, nearer home in Tirupur from 2022, the automotive industry must adopt similar binding and enforceable mechanisms.
The automobile sector as a whole contributes around 7 percent to the GDP of India, of which 2.3 percent comes from the auto components manufacturing sector.
These should include comprehensive inspections, transparent reporting and genuine efforts towards capacity building at all levels of the supply chain.
In lieu of a conclusion, we would like to reproduce here a cynicism of the wife of a worker injured in the accident and urge the stakeholders to acknowledge a certain de facto negligence and, ipso facto, a certain persistence of unsafe and hazardous conditions for the workers.
“What will come of these enquiries? Nothing really changes here. Important people come, ask, and everyone forgets about it in sometime. We are the ones who have to struggle through it all,” she told us.
Beneath the apparent cynicism lies a historical and systemic negligence which articulates itself as a structural divide of ‘important people’ and ‘those who struggle’— of ‘us’ and ‘them’.
The trope of conflict as a cost to be borne for socially unsustainable practices is not lost on the automotive industry in India and even globally, and we urge reckoning with the same.
The path to a socially sustainable and safe automotive industry in India lies in bridging the gap between regulation and practice and fostering an on-going process of social dialogue that includes all stakeholders— workers, management, civil society organisations, policy makers and global brands.
More than the immediate supplier and factory management, accidents reflect poorly on buyers and brands at the top of the supply chains.
Ensuring workers’ right to collective participation is vital to this process. A process where the voices of the workers are not only heard but are central to the discourse on occupational safety and health.
By advocating for stronger enforcement of existing laws and fostering a culture of safety and accountability, we can ensure that the lives of workers are not sacrificed at the altar of industrial progress.
Ashmita Sharma is the executive director of SLD. She champions sustainable industrial practices that integrate gender equity and labour rights.
Yugank Mishra is a historian engaged with the social development sector.
