Discarded like curry leaves after a meal is how fifty-one-year-old Mohandoss Ganesan describes the situation he and 83 others are in. Mohandoss is the secretary and treasurer of the Karnataka General Labour Union (KGLU) that took their employers – who are part of the Nirma Group – to court for fraudulently claiming that they were labourers hired for contractual work. The court agreed with them and ruled in their favour, ordering the company Nuvoco Vistas Corporation to pay arrears in lakhs of rupees to each of the 84 workers of the union. But when the 20-year battle – fought in the courts and on the streets – ended in victory for the union, the company challenged the ruling in the Karnataka High Court. 

Mohandoss Ganesan joined a ready-mix concrete (RMC) manufacturing plant owned by Larsen and Toubro in 2002. At the time, L&T owned five RMC plants in Bengaluru and one in Mysuru, and paid the salaries directly to the workers along with contributions for Employees’ State Insurance (ESI) and Provident Fund (PF). 

In the early 2000s, the company began listing some workers as subcontractors and made it look like the workers, including Mohandoss, received their salaries from these subcontractors. However, the work done by these workers was the same as that done by the rest. 

By this time, many workers at L&T’s RMC plants had already put in several years of work. “You work hard for the whole year and wait for April. Imagine getting an increment of 15 paise per day on your wages. Between 1996 and 2004, our increments used to be something like 15 paise, 50 paise, 60 paise, 20 paise… We were angry. Someone we knew suggested we form a union, saying that it might give us some security. When we formed the union, we had absolutely no security.”

Initially, the union was affiliated with the Centre for Indian Trade Unions (CITU), which is the labour wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). In 2012, the union quit its association with CITU and became affiliated with the All India Central Council of Trade Unions (AICCTU), the labour wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation. 

Soon after they formed and registered the union in 2004, they began to demand the regularisation of their work. For about five-six months, they protested by slowing production. The plants ran around the clock, and the workers worked in shifts. So, each day, from the usual 80-90 vehicle loads of ready-mix concrete, they slowed production to about one load an hour, to about 17-18 vehicle loads per day, Mohandoss said. 

The company retaliated by effecting salary cuts, withholding bonus and other measures. When the workers raised a dispute with the Labour Department under the Industrial Disputes Act 1947, the company finally had to pay the owed wages through the Department in 2005. 

“Back then, our wages used to be about Rs 4,000 a month. During the settlement, they raised it to about Rs 8,000,” Mohandoss recalls. They also asked for their appointments to be made permanent,  but the company simply refused. 

Around this time, L&T roped in a company called Total Solution Support Services through which it routed the workers’ salaries. 

In 2008, a company named Lafarge India Limited took over the RMC plants from L&T. The business transfer agreement dated June 24, 2008, stated that none of the workers would be removed. 

In November 2010, Total Solution was replaced by a firm called Wize-Men HR Services, which retrenched all the workers. In protest, they struck work at all six units. “We put up tents outside the factory. We sat there without a rupee paid in wages, cooked and ate right there outside the factory, we even asked people for money to help us get by,” Mohandoss said. 

Ten months after they launched their protest, the Labour Secretariat passed an order saying that the retrenchment was illegal and the workers could rejoin. 

The fight for regularisation continued. Lafarge changed its name to Nuvoco Vistas Corporation in 2017, after it was acquired by the Nirma Group the previous year. Nirma Group is the fifth-largest cement group in India and the leading cement player in eastern India in terms of capacity, according to its website. Its business includes cement, ready-mix concrete (RMC), and modern building materials. Nuvoco has a presence in 85 locations across the country, including 13 cement manufacturing plants and 53 RMC plants across the country. 

KGLU placed its charter of demands before Nuvoco on October 31, 2012. Again, the union demanded that all the workers be regularised. 

When the company did not respond positively, the union raised a dispute with the Labour Department under the Industrial Disputes Act 1947 (ID Act). When conciliation failed, the Labour Department, on November 22, 2013, referred the matter to the Industrial Tribunal under Section 10(1)(d) of the ID Act.

Regularisation would mean a substantial financial gain for the workers – permanent workers are paid at least double what Mohandoss and others who are reflected as contract workmen get for doing the same job, Mohandoss explained. 

For instance, Mohandoss is a loader and machine operator. He earns around Rs 45,000 a month, but his actual pay is only half that. “We have an unwritten agreement with the management of having a 12-hour shift........

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