Report of the Royal Commission on Labour in India

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1850495947

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-233603

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Report of the Royal Commission on Labour in India

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: His Majesty's Stationery Off.

Year of publication:: 1931

Scope:: xviii, 580 S.; graph. Darst., Kt.

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter VI. - Seasonal factories

Collection:: Economics Books

SEASONAL FACTORIES. 77 India the season is at its height between December and March. Men and women are employed on ginning in about equal proportions. Boys are engaged on sweeping and odd jobs, but girls are only occasionally employed. The labour is predominatingly local ; it comes from surround- ing villages, returning home at night, and is employed directly by the owner or lessee of the ginnery. In some cases, however, particularly in the Punjab, a labour contractor is employed who takes on workers by the day. Many of these people move at will from ginnery to ginnery or from press to press throughout the season, even in districts where the wages are practically standardised. In other districts, notably in Madras, sometimes as many as three-quarters of the workers are in the employ, not of the owner or lessee, but of the ‘merchant or contractor whose cotton is being ginned. This position has been known to cause difficulties in the observance of the Act since factory owners, accused of breaking the regulation in respect of hours, plead that the persons properly responsible are the direct employers of the men, Tea Factories. In North India the work in the tea factories is seasonal ; the factories do not work in the cold weather, and, even in the season when they are open, the work is intermittent. In good weather the flush of leaf usually necessitates a period of heavy pressure with resultant over- time. In bad weather less leaf is plucked and manufacture accordingly decreases. Men are employed on general maintenance work, as boiler attendants, engine drivers, despatchers, etc., as well as on the manufac- turing processes of withering, rolling, drying and fermenting. Women are employed in small numbers, mostly in cleaning and picking over the manufactured tea after it has been graded. These factories are exempt from the rest period, the weekly holiday and adherence to specified hours, but, in order to allow of irregular rest periods, the number of workers employed must be 25 per cent. greater than the number necessary to do the work at any given time. No one may be required to work for more than 14 days at a time without a whole day’s leave. All workers are selected from the ordinary plantation population, with the exception of skilled men engaged on machinery. "In the case of the women, some plantations employ many who are either pregnant or have just returned to work after child-birth, or women who are convalescent after illness, in order to allow of their heing employed temporarily in a sedentary occupation. Rice Milling, Rice milling is mainly carried on in Burma, Madras and Bengal, In Burma it is the main factory industry and here the bulk of the mills are strictly seasonal. The number of factories working in 1929 was 608 employing about 40,000 persons. In Madras and Bengal the number of persons employed in 1929 wag 16,500 and 12,500 respectively. In both Presidencies rice mills are not strictly seasonal, but they do not as a rule remain open throughout the year, their working being regulated by the demand for milled rice which varies according to trade fluctuations. Both raw or ¢ sunned ’ and parboiled rice milling are carried on, but the

Access restriction

Copyright

fullscreen: Report of the Royal Commission on Labour in India

Monograph

Chapter

Table of contents

Download

Monograph

Chapter

This page

Image fragment

Citation links

Citation recommendation