Bleak outlook

Declining opportunities and worsening working conditions combine to present a grim near-term future for employment.

A plantation worker plucking tea leaves at a plantation near Marayoor in Idukki district, Kerala. Small-time tea growers in Idukki are apprehensive about the steep fall in prices of green leaves during the start of the peak production season. The farmers send the green leaves directly to the factories which decide the prices. They get an average price of Rs.7 a kilo but after deducting the transportation charge, they get a price from Rs.4 to Rs.5. The price had reached Rs.15 during the lean summer season. For plucking a kilogram of green leaves, workers have to be paid Rs.6 or a daily wage of Rs.200.according to planters the region. Over 10,000 small-time growers and nearly 30 societies have registered with the Tea Board in the High Ranges, mainly in Devikulam, Peerumade, and Udumbanchola taluks. Only a few factories are working in Devikulam and Peerumade where the major tea estates are located, Photo: K_K_Mustafah.2/06/2011.

THE ILO’s 2016 World Employment Social Outlook report has forecast that the number of unemployed persons worldwide will to rise in 2016 and 2017 and that most of this increase will take place in emerging economies. The report also says that India is one of the countries with the highest rates of employment vulnerability, with more than 60 per cent of the working population having no access to formal work and possibly good working conditions.

Data from the Ministry of Labour and Employment show that Central government employment has plummeted over the years from 2000, while State government employment has seesawed between dips and gains but always remained below the 2000 level. Employment in labour-intensive sectors such as plantations and mines too has mostly fallen from decade-ago levels.

The Ministry's Labour Bureau has been conducting quick employment surveys every quarter ever since the global recession in 2008. According to its findings, there was a period of severe job loss followed by a net addition of jobs, which totalled 37.46 lakh, between end-2008 and end-2014. (The surveys covered sectors such as textiles, metals, automobiles, IT/BPO and handloom/powerloom.) In the context of the workforce expanding by about one crore every year, this addition is minuscule and clearly points to the enormous vulnerability that vast sections of the workforce are trapped in.