The workers who keep India’s cities running have a simple message – pay us living wages
· Scroll
The protests by workers across Indian cities through early April are an urgent signal that survival is impossible on wages that hover around the bare legal minimum.
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Domestic, gig and delivery workers to industrial labourers in the Delhi-National Capital Region protested demanding an increase in wages and overtime pay. Most of them are often migrant workers to India’s urban centres.
The spark was the increase in basic expenses following the shortage of cooking gas and economic uncertainty after the US-Israel launched military strikes on Iran in February, setting off a conflict which is now closing in on two months.
In Noida, protesting workers told the Indian Express that their monthly salaries ranged from Rs 13,000 to Rs 20,000 but expenses had increased, with rent costing Rs 5,000 and food Rs 4,000, and nothing to save. One factory worker in Noida told a news publication that his employer hiked his monthly pay by Rs 39. Worse still, workers report deductions as punishment for protesting and their wage demands were met with batons.
Across urban India, the numbers tell the same story.
Domestic workers manage to earn anywhere between Rs 7,000 - Rs 12,000 a month by working in multiple homes, with no leave or social security in the National Capital Region, says a report in the Hindustan Times. Security guards working at Delhi’s leading hospitals earned...