Although individual companies are wary of admitting to cutting contract and casual labourers, examples abound. Rajive Chawla, president of Faridabad Small Industries Association, said: “Textile and auto components are badly down. Some 30,000 casual labourers are out of a job (in the Faridabad cluster).” His association has 18,000 industries under its fold in sectors as varied as auto parts, light engineering, dyeing, printing and textiles.
D. Muralidhar, president of the Federation of Karnataka Chambers of Commerce and Industry, an industry lobby group with 2,500 members, points to another example, that of Peenya industrial estate. “About 10-15% of 500,000 labourers employed in Peenya have lost their jobs,” he said. Peenya is one among the largest small-industry clusters in the country with over 5,000 units in auto parts, garments and light engineering.
National industry bodies such as the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry have no estimates for job losses. B.P. Pant, director, labour, at the federation, said: “It is very difficult to estimate how many contract labourers have lost jobs.”
Shally Seth contributed tothis story.