Guest post by MADHUMITA DUTTA and VENKATACHANDRIKA RADHAKRISHNAN
The writers are activists based in Chennai working on issues of land, labour, industry and SEZs.
S Ambika, a 22 year old woman factory-worker, died in the middle of the night in a posh hospital in Chennai on 31st Oct. She was a permanent employee of Nokia Telecom Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in Sriperumbadur in Kancheepuram district of Tamil Nadu. Her agonising death was due to a fatal accident at a panel loading machine in the factory.
An assembly line worker, Ambika was not a technician. And it was definitely not her job to repair the jam inside the loader machine. But she, like rest of her fellow workers, risked accidents daily on these machines when the magazine rack on which the metal panels are loaded gets stuck many times a day. “We repair the machines ourselves. How can we wait 10-15 minutes for the technicians to come when we have to meet our production targets?” asked an agitated Nokia worker waiting for Ambika’s body outside the Apollo hospital’s mortuary. And that’s what happened that fateful day.
Ambika was working on the loader machine, which loads metal panels into a magazine rack which then moves through a conveyor belt into a blade (metal box). It is a closed loop system that works through sensors. For each such cycle, 100 mobiles are produced. At around 6.45 pm on 31st Oct, Ambika’s machine jammed. The conveyor belt got stuck and the sensor stopped functioning. “Out of 25 such assembly line machines, which are all new models, 8 machines have been regularly getting stuck atleast 20 times a shift due to malfunctioning of the sensors”, informed some of the assembled Nokia workers outside Apollo. “We have repeatedly complained to the technicians and the line managers about this for past several months. But they have not paid any attention. They are aware that we were risking our lives everyday.”
When Ambika put her head inside under the metal box to pull the magazine rack, the conveyor belt came unstuck. Immediately the sensor started functioning and the blade (metal box) came down to load the panels. The process was so quick that before Ambika could pull her head out, the metal box fell on her head and neck. The machine got jammed again, this time with Ambika’s head inside it. Ambika could not reach the emergency button behind the small door on the machine. Even if she could have, the button would not have helped as the blade would have come down to its ‘ideal’ position before stopping. Only a power shutdown could have stopped the system, a decision no one was willing to take.
Alarmed co-workers called the technicians who for 25 minutes could not figure out how to get Ambika’s head out of the machine. Nor were tools available which could pry open the blade. In those 25 minutes Ambika fainted bleeding from her nose and mouth. Her neck had got crushed under the metal box.
Agitated workers asked the technicians to break the machine so that Ambika could be taken out, but the line managers dismissed the demand by saying that the “machine was too costly”. Ambika was taken to a local hospital 45 minutes after the accident and then brought to Apollo Hospital in Chennai. By then it was too late. Ambika died later in the night.
Fifteen minutes after Ambika was taken to the hospital, all the faulty sensors were rectified, Ambika’s bloodied machine was cleaned and workers were ordered to resume work. Agitated workers were told that the company will incur losses if they stop the work.
“We keep working like machines in these assembly lines. We have to meet our production targets at all costs. Injuries are very common. In the stamping room, hand injury is very common where fingers get crushed inside the stamping machines” said one of the workers. “It depends on the demand for a particular model. For model no. 1616 we need to assemble 40,000 handsets per day, for some models it can be 12,000 sets per day”.
Nokia’s Sriperumbadur plant produces the largest number of mobile handsets in the world. The unit, capable of producing 7.5 lakhs units per day, has produced about 350 million units since the production started in 2006 as reported by Economics Times in June 2010. Grief stricken and in a state of shock, Ambika’s parents, farm labourers from Puttithangal village in Vellore district, stood outside the hospital waiting to take their dead daughter’s body home. Nokia management had not even informed the parents about their daughter’s accident till late in the night. Under pressure from the trade unions, Nokia finally conceded to give compensation of Rs 10 lakhs and a job to a family member.
Ironically Nokia’s website claims that the Sriperumbadur plant has ‘world class’ safety systems and has been designed keeping in mind ‘worker’s safety’. On 1st November, the company released a press statement stating “We are investigating this tragic incident thoroughly and we are also collaborating with local authorities in India with full transparency. While it would be inappropriate and insensitive to the family of our colleague to comment on the details of this accident until the full facts are known, we can say that the details being reported by some online media and tabloid publications are simply untrue”.
Joint investigation launched by the State Labour Commissioner and Factories Inspectorate is yet to come out with its findings of the accident. No action has been taken against the management and maybe it never will. Similar investigations of accidents in Sriperumbadur area, the SEZ heartland of Tamil Nadu, haven’t even yielded a single report let alone action against any company. In July this year, 200 workers in the assembling unit of Taiwanese MNC Foxconn India Private Limited, which supplies mobile components to Nokia suddenly fell unconscious while working inside the factory in two different shifts. A few vomited blood and complained of giddiness, some suffered breathlessness, coughing, pain in the chest. They complained of ’poisonous gas leak’ inside the factory. Some of the workers had to be hospitalised for 15 days. A team of ‘experts’ led by Chief Inspector of Factories (CIF) investigating the incidence could not ascertain what caused the workers to faint. A shoddy government investigation attributed the ‘probable’ cause to a pesticide leak during a pest control operation. The CIF team gave a clean chit to the factory which reopened within a few days after being shut temporarily.
It left one wondering if it were indeed a pesticide leak then how did the management allow pest control operations while hundreds of workers were inside the factory? Foxconn management went unaccounted for exposing their workers to unsafe work conditions. Till date the real reason behind the incidence is not known.“There are accidents everyday in these SEZ units in Sriperumbadur and Oragadam. These hi-tech multinational companies flout safety conditions and labour regulations on a daily basis. In most cases accidents are not recorded or registered. These companies are getting away with murder. How can you say that an accident has taken place if it does not even get registered?” asked Soundararajan, state general secretary of Centre for Indian Trade Union (CITU).
Complaints of striking women workforce of Chinese company Build Your Own Dreams (BYD) Electronics India (P) Ltd, another supplier to Nokia in the neighbouring Oragadam industrial area, are a testimony to the sweatshop-like working conditions in some of these factories. BYD workers have 12-hour work shifts, with very little breaks in between, and no holidays for weeks. Workers are made to work even on festivals and national holidays. Worse still, they suffer all manner of injuries such as heat blisters in their hands due to handling of hot mobile covers while taking them out of the moulding machines manually. Loss of fingers and hand injuries are common accidents amongst workers, for which no compensation is given, only medical treatment in some private hospital is provided by the company.
Workers from Caparo, a fully owned subsidiary of Caparo UK, also allege that when they are injured at work, the company immediately gives them a notice of negligence at work without any investigation.
“We are told we have ESI (Employees State Insurance), but we do not have cards or ESI numbers, we don’t even know where the ESI hospital is,” lamented a woman worker who has been on strike in front of the factory since October 28.
“We face hostile attitude from the line supervisors. They use abusive language when we spend a few extra minutes in the bathrooms during our menstruation. In the assembly section, we cannot even leave our spot even to go to the bathrooms till someone else replaces us”, complained another worker.
BYD has over 50% women workforce, but all the supervisors and managers are men. “Women workers from Salcomp, a Nokia component supplier inside Nokia Telecom SEZ have privately complained to us about sexual harassment and poor working conditions inside the factory. Workers from American company Sanmina-SCI have told us of similar situation. But they all are too scared to come out openly and lodge complaints. The work situation is hostile in these SEZs,” said Soundararajan.
Incidences of accidents and poor working conditions abound in Sriperumbadur area. Hyundai Motor India’s car manufacturing facility in Irungattukottai had seen seven workers severely injured in a fire in the paint shop in 2008. The accident happened nine months after four workers died in the factory while cleaning the tank which stored waste paints. For a region with more than 200 industries, the lack of adequate health facilities in the area is quite startling, not to say alarming. The local private hospitals are hardly equipped to treat any major accidents as it happened in Ambika’s case or the Foxconn gas leak.It is interesting to note that Apollo hospital is now planning to set up a 60 bedded hospital inside Nokia Telecom SEZ. It has sought exemption from the central Board of Approval in Ministry of Commerce for a waiver to treat patients from outside SEZs.
Ambika’s tragic death and the stories of working conditions in this rapidly industrialising town have thrown up a lot of issues regarding the worth of a worker’s life. The morning after Ambika’s death, listening to workers narrating their work woes outside Apollo hospital reminded one of scenes from Charlie Chaplin’s famous movie Modern Times, which showcased the desperate economic situation during the Great Depression, a direct consequence, as many have argued, of the ‘efficiencies of modern industrialisation’. Similar scenes seem to be playing out again 70 years later in these hi-tech modern industrial zones of Tamil Nadu. Efficiency and production target is given primacy over safety and dignity of the workers. The only difference being that here women are main protaganists–over 70% of the workforce in this area are women.
KAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006 
“We repair the machines ourselves. How can we wait 10-15 minutes for the technicians to come when we have to meet our production targets?”
LOL. if the tradeoff is between waiting 15 minutes and death, they deserve to get their stupid heads stuck in a machine if they can’t wait.
“We have repeatedly complained to the technicians and the line managers about this for past several months. But they have not paid any attention. They are aware that we were risking our lives everyday.”
Is taking 10-15 minutes to come & fix a problem = not paying any attention? Or are they not coming at all? In which case, the previous statement about having to wait a whole era of 15 minutes is false. Which is it?
“Agitated workers asked the technicians to break the machine so that Ambika could be taken out, but the line managers dismissed the demand by saying that the “machine was too costly”. Ambika was taken to a local hospital 45 minutes after the accident and then brought to Apollo Hospital in Chennai. By then it was too late. Ambika died later in the night”
The first part of this sentence seems to suggest they could not get Ambika out, i.e. that’s why the machine needs to be broken. Yet she was eventually taken out, therefore, there was no need to ‘break the machine’
“Grief stricken and in a state of shock, Ambika’s parents, farm labourers from Puttithangal village in Vellore district, stood outside the hospital waiting to take their dead daughter’s body home. Nokia management had not even informed the parents about their daughter’s accident till late in the night.”
Yes, they had not informed them because…..her parents are…farm labourers – who usually spend their lives sitting at a desk phone that they would be easily available on the phone.
” In July this year, 200 workers in the assembling unit of Taiwanese MNC Foxconn India Private Limited, which supplies mobile components to Nokia suddenly fell unconscious while working inside the factory in two different shifts”
200 people? Really? And not a single news item on this anywhere? 200?
“BYD workers have 12-hour work shifts, with very little breaks in between, and no holidays for weeks. Workers are made to work even on festivals and national holidays”
The sentence seems to imply workers are forced to work on holidays, and given no compensatory time off. Which is obviously not the case, but why let the truth get in the way of this post, right?
‘ In the assembly section, we cannot even leave our spot even to go to the bathrooms till someone else replaces us”, complained another worker.’
Standard operating procedure in assembly lines the world over.
‘“Women workers from Salcomp, a Nokia component supplier inside Nokia Telecom SEZ have privately complained to us about sexual harassment and poor working conditions inside the factory.”
Interesting. Did these poor women complain about the sexual harassment and poor working conditions they faced before there were any factories in Sriperumbadur? I am sure life then was all tea and cake for them prior to industrialisation. I am sure their menfolk treated them with absolute respect, before these evil factories came to the area. It must definitely be all of Nokia’s fault.
‘The morning after Ambika’s death, listening to workers narrating their work woes outside Apollo hospital reminded one of scenes from Charlie Chaplin’s famous movie Modern Times’
Yes, interesting you make that parallel. Charlin Chaplin, after all, is a classical king of comedy.
‘The only difference being that here women are main protaganists–over 70% of the workforce in this area are women. ‘
Interesting – instead of bearing children and walking 10000 miles to pick up water, there are women working in factories, and earning a living. And yet, this is presented as a case against industrialisation.
How do you misanthropes sleep at night?
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Good you brought some nice points forward .. and gave balance to the article… instead of just “bleeding heart” story ..
It is true that life must not have been very different before nokia plant was setup..
There must have been issues of harassment etc..
But that is no justification for the issues in the plant right.. ?
yes one has to find a replacement to go the loo and its a standard procedure ..
but isn’t it too inhuman ..
you might say why goto such jobs .. you always have the choice to do something else..
The important point to think is .. should we leave the issue as yet another inevitability
or should we/they try to do something to improve the working conditions ..
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Is the alternative to “bearing children and walking 10000 miles to pick up water” a life with indignity, exploitation and death? The article is trying highlight some of the ills of modern industrialisation where there is scant disregard for human lives. In the case of Nokia plant in Sriperumbadur which is the highest productive of all Nokia plants, the pressure to keep up productivity overlooks all the incidents of lack of safety until something of a magnitude of Ambika’s death happens. Even then as has been demonstrated in Ambika’ death, the concern of the management and the supervisors was on the safety of the capital(machine) over a worker. Obviously this is not new to the Fordist model of production which has been critiqued and documented enough in the past few decades.
As to the case of foxconn workers which was well covered in both vernacular and English press both locally and internationally, one just needs to google.
Ambika’s parents while may not be in front of “deskphones” are not living in such a remote place that access to them is not possible. The comment reflects lack of understanding of local region and how labour is organized locally.
Through the article, it was also attempted to show how multinational industries flout labour regulations consistently, the case in point being the 12 hour work shift and work during holidays. These are examples of how multinational companies exploit for profit the weak implementation of labour laws in third world countries.
The response to the article is reflective of lack of understanding of mode of production and organization of labour in a capitalist system where value is attached to productivity and commodity only and labour is expendable.
Finally, one has to be truly naive not to see the truth behind Chaplin’s comedy.
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Adam Smith,
First, you have an anger management issue; deal with it.
Second, as somebody researching labour conditions in India, NONE of the facts in the post are surprising or new for me. You can keep saying ‘really? really?’ and deploy the full range of your sarcasm, but that isn’t going to change the fact – working conditions in India are barely above what they were during colonial times, sometimes they are worse. Simple, brutal capitalist reason – supply of semi-skilled or unskilled labour in our country will always be more than demand. Employers will exploit this fact. So yes, no compensatory time off after working on festivals – YES YES YES. I will email you fact sheets, since I’m starting to wonder which charmed world you’ve been living in.
Third, about media coverage, again it is a blatant fact that the media will NOT report pro-labour. How many cases of industrial accidents have you seen reported in the past, say, decade? A truly horrific accident with major casualties may make it to the front pages for a couple of days, but it will never be covered like, say, the Mumbai terror attacks or the 2G scam. 200 workers fainting? Bah. Standard operating conditions, some of your comrades and colleagues may say. Of course you have the option of pretending that simply because a tree fell in the wood and nobody saw/reported it, it didn’t happen, but then you would have to have truly heroic faith in the media.
Fourth, about pre-liberalisation times, when you write that women had to walk ‘10000 miles to pick up water’, etc. For somebody so invested in facts and truth, you clearly weren’t burdened while making this exaggeration. Anyway, let’s leave that aside. What amazes me is this either-or reasoning, by which critiquing liberalisation means having to support all that came before it. Why don’t we have the option of critiquing women’s exploitation as a whole? Before and after liberalisation, conditions for women have improved in some sectors, worsened in others, remained distressingly similar in others. For example, women often have to walk miles/take long and tiring bus journeys/face sexual harassment to get to factories. They are often given the most underpaid, degrading and sometimes dangerous jobs within the factory. And often they work because they have no other choice, its not some shining road to freedom for most.
Finally, about the extreme offensiveness of your language, which can only reveal the extreme offensiveness of your worldview, by which you blame workers’ own stupidity for their deaths (not to mention farm workers’ parents for not sitting near a ‘desk phone’). For your own sake I hope the revolution doesn’t come in your time, because it won’t take a minute for the firing squad to blame your own stupidity in standing in front of them.
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Here’s a news plant about the Nokia plant in the Economic Times. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/quickiearticleshow/6087051.cms
It has this quote of the plant director:
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can we go for a campaign with the reminder to Nokia users– whenever you see the Nokia colours, think of Ambika’s blood splashed on them ?
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Mr. Adam Smith you should better mind your language. The way of looking at the trajic death of an individual and simply denying the facts by quoting international standards wont justify the actions of the management.
Heartless monster, its the time to change slave like attitude….these people should be paid back in the same manner. And mr. adam smith….if ur relatives are met with the same type of accident….. what will be ur reaction…hope it will be the same as it is in the comment.
Never ever equate the life of an individual with the cost of the machine.
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i think this is a great dilemma of modern times…….
Slowing the speed of production or less working hours will mean less production , less production means less profit…..if less profit..then why come to India??? there are enough places in the world where they can get cheaper labour……
Not coming to India means less employment whose victims will be women MORE as compared to men…..
whats the alternative?? any ideas??
i guess alternative will be application of labour laws uniformly globally….
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Dear Ron,
This ‘great dilemma’ that you talk of becomes one only when we have successfully eliminated all other forms of life – first from our horizon of what is legitimate (walking 10000 miles to get water blah blah blah, as one of the commentators above blah-ed), and then from real life. Let capital first decimate every other form, then all we are left with is a situation where we can only depend on capital to provide us jobs. Capital first colonizes our imagination, before it colonizes life.
Now, I am sure you are not saying this in the way the commentator above has said it. But really the question is this: Have we really thought about any alternative form/s of ownership and production? Say cooperative production? Usually, cooperatives are thought of (at least in India) when industry owners have squeezed the last drop from the enterprise and it becomes terminally sick. At that point, workers take over a Kamani Tubes or a Kanoria Jute Mills. There is really no chance in hell that they can then make it run profitably for any length of time. Further, a lot of recent work has shown and quite decisively, that what used to be called the ‘informal sector’ and was thought to be functioning ‘sub-optimally’, covers such a wide range that modern bourgeois visionaries like Hernando de Soto estimate that there is more wealth circulating in these economies than in the national stock exchanges of Egypt, Indonesia, Peru and a host of other African, Asian and South American countries. Even economists at the IMF have lately begun re-assessing the role of these economies in the context of the ongoing recession in the Western world – given the fact that these did not really suffer from recession. Finally, have we really thought about making agriculture more viable? Does agriculture have to go with fetching water from 10000 miles? It is a different matter that this is not even an accurate picture of agriculture in places like India but really, do we really think improvement of agriculture is simply not possible and that it is destined to be destroyed because it is historically obsolete? The point really is to think afresh rather than surrender before this promised Dreamworld of Capital – a world that is now imploding anyway.
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Thank you Mr.Aditya Nigam for this detailed response.
Yeah you are right. Its a failure of imagination that we normally dont think beyond capitalist forms of ownership and production and statist one.
Cooperative production or Anarcho-syndicalists structure of production and ownership can become a viable alternative to the exploitative capitalists/statist forms.
However , i am not sure how these alternatives will take into account the entrepreneurial abilities of ordinary citizens…..
Also , making agriculture more viable is also a great idea.
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i have a questionnaire to distribute to nokia technicians can someone help, just to find out the impact of hr practices,
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