After protesting upon being fired from housekeeping jobs, unions now assert themselves more firmly to employing residents: demand 40% job quota

Even though mills have shut down and residential buildings have come up on their land, former mill workers seem unable to shake off their attachment to it.


A pile of garbage rots in the stairwell of the building because maids refuse to work

In fact, they are getting increasingly assertive of their rights to the land, or the jobs that subsequent enterprises constructed on the land may create.

Their latest demand is of a 40 per cent quota in all forms of employment generated from anything built on mill land.

Ask the residents of Dosti Flamingos constructed on China Mill land in Sewri.

After MiD DAY reported ('Hire mill workers in buildings on mill land', February 21, and 'You can't choose your own guard here', February 13) about the hue and cry raised by ex mill workers, sacked from their jobs as housekeepers and guards by the residents due to alleged incompetence, they allegedly barged the building a second time.

Harrowed residents claimed that the mill union leader, Harinath Tiwari, stormed their society meeting, and asked residents to reserve a 40-per cent quota for workers in all forms of employment.

After spending crores for their houses, the 500-odd flat owners in the building now must bow down to the unions, which claim that wherever mill land is developed, they will ensure that mill workers are given jobs exclusively.

They made this amply clear after allegedly forcibly commanding the audience of the residents at the meeting.u00a0

'Unfair demand'

"What we now understand is that with redevelopment work in progress on adjoining mill lands in the area, the mill unions have found a new lease of life.

Today, they want a quota in our society. Tomorrow, they will demand the same from other societies," said a flat owner.

"They have been paid their VRS dues, then why these unreasonable demands? We aren't a government-run building. We are a private society, not bound by any contract to hire mill workers.
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Still, we do it on humanitarian grounds. But now, they want us to hire people who are not fit to do the jobs. This is unfair," he said.

Ruled out

According to an amendment made by the monitoring committee, a state-appointed body that takes care of the sale and redevelopment of mill land - under DC rule 58(7)(B), mill workers should be given employment till the time the construction is on. In the case of Dosti Flamingos, the builder had complied with the rule.

However, the residents allege that mill workers have gone a step beyond and now want even the flat owners to employ them, and disturbingly, only them.

'Baigiri'

Residents allege that housemaids, getting bolder on the steam of the mill workers, have become impudent and refuse to do the chores. They just say they are part of the union, and this is supposed to silence residents.
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"The maids used to take the garbage out, but now they retort that they are part of the union and will not do any work that involves going out of the home," said a resident. This has resulted in garbage piling inside the building.

The Other Side

Harinath Tiwari, union leader of Girni Kamgar Karmachari Nivara ani Kalyankari Sangh, is convinced of the righteousness of his demands.

"We need not a 40 per cent, but a 100 per cent quota on the mill lands that are developed. Not just this building, but anywhere a mill land is developed, we will go there and see to it that all our workers get their dues and are employed," he said.