Making glass bangles is often a labour of love.

Each bangle passes through the hands of 60 workers before reaching the market for sale. There are more than 39 different processes involved, each intricate and attention-consuming. Some processes, however, require more blood than sweat.

“My nails bleed every day,” says Hina, a home-based worker associated with Hyderabad’s bangle manufacturing industry. “Five other girls and I join the spiral ends of processed bangles, which really is a very difficult task. When we carve designs on these bangles, shards of glass hit our nails and cut through them. The pain from these cuts and bruises has become part of my life.”

Of the 39 different processes involved in making bangles, some are exclusively the preserve of women. In the year 1996, the tasks of sadai (aligning), jurrai (joining), katai (cutting) and printing designs went completely in the hands of women. Ever since, women became crucial cogs of the industry — HomeNet Pakistan and the Labour Education Foundation estimated in 2009 that more than 675,000 women were engaged in manufacturing glass bangles. This number has risen in the seven years since.

Wedding season is upon us and glass bangles are in high demand again. But for the women who make these bangles, often by hand and at home, life is a bed of shards. The government doesn’t recognise them as “workers”, contractors exploit them with low wages, and any injury sustained on the job is deemed to have happened at home. This is the heart-rending story of the invisible hands who add spirit and soul to every Pakistani wedding

Despite being essential to Hyderabad’s glass bangles industry, home-based women workers find themselves relegated to disposable status. The glass bangles industry has been on the decline for a few years now as manufacturers struggle with irregular gas supply and ensuring that labour regulations are met. Glass bangles only have seasonal demand — when the wedding season draws closer or if there are any festivities to be held. The rest of the year, business is very slow.

For an industry that is ailing, women and children are the cheap resource that keeps things ticking over. But when it comes to financial remunerations, safety gear or medical compensation, they are exploited by exclusion.

Home is where the work is

The city of Hyderabad is famed for its bangles, in part due to its Partition legacy.

In 1947, when bangle-makers were migrating from India, the majority from the nearby state of Rajasthan settled in Hyderabad and started their trade in their adopted hometown. This sudden infusion of artisans boosted the Sindhi craft of bangle-making. Afterwards, more and more artisans adopted the trade and became professional bangle-makers. It is estimated that today, directly or indirectly, more than one million assistants and associated workers turn the wheels of Hyderabad’s bangle industry. This includes the women.

Rehana is a 35-year-old woman who used to work the bhatti (makeshift oven) that shapes glass shards into circular bangles. One day, pieces of glass entered her eyes and eventually she lost her eyesight.

In Hyderabad, the glass bangle industry is situated around three localities: Sindh Industrial and Trading Estate (SITE), The Old City and Latifabad. The SITE area is an established and formal industrial estate, where a number of glass bangles manufacturing factories are housed. But The Old City and Latifabad resemble a cottage industry, where a bulk of production takes place in one or two bedroom quarters which double up as tiny workshops.

According to a survey carried out in 2009 by the All Hyderabad Churi Welding Contractors Workers Union, 45 bangle manufacturing factories were operational in Hyderabad at the time. It was estimated back then that more than 10,000 male workers work at these factories in separate eight-hour shifts. However, the majority of the workforce engaged in the industry remains home-based women workers even today.

Labour activists explain that the industry is largely home-based because it removes any liability for factories and contractors. Factories had outsourced certain manufacturing processes of bangle-making after the industry began struggling with high input costs. Supply of gas is crucial to manufacturing but was perennially short in supply. As a result, tasks were distributed to many contractors who in turn hired many families to do various jobs without leaving the comfort of their homes.

The manufacture of bangles received industry status in 2007 under the National Employment Policy but bangle-making labourers aren’t formally recognised as workers since they are largely home-based.

This is one reason why official statistics on the exact number of labourers involved in the glass bangles industry don’t exist and why most labour organisations continue to work with estimates. Meanwhile, the government has made no attempt to count these women workers either.

Home-based workers’ terms of work are not regulated by any law. Rates for work carried out cannot be renegotiated either — workers either accept the paltry sums being offered to them or look for another job.

On the ground, this practice translates into little remuneration and hazardous work conditions. Women bear the brunt of this exercise — not only are they paid low work compensation, any injury at ‘work’ is technically happening at home.

The cost of a pittance

For the past 15 years, Jamila Abdul Latif has been doing the work of sadai and jurrai. During this process, she would cut the bangles by placing them over a flame and later weld them together.

Typically, women are paid by the tora (360-365 bangles). Sadai earns two and a half rupees per tora while jurrai bags five rupees per tora. Workers use their own fuel; they work on eight to 10 toras per day. Family members including small children also assist them. Their daily income is about 200-250 rupees.

But these numbers hide the real cost of working in this industry: Jamila became asthmatic and suffered heart disease as a result of the countless hours spent in front of the flames. For many years, she inhaled toxic fumes from the thinner and petrol used in manufacturing. Today her daughters, aged 23 and 26, assist her in making bangles. Their fate seems to have been written already.

Jamila has now been relegated to decoration duties. Her task is to adorn bangles with laces, beads, artificial diamonds, wooden material and thin metallic chains. These are wrapped in beautiful plastic sheets or card boxes by women at home. For packing four karrhays and 12 bangles, they are paid six to 10 rupees. They typically work for 12 to 14 hours every day but are paid only two to three thousand rupees per month.

“Wages are generally paid late by the pallaydar (contractor) and sometimes not at all,” explains Jamila, who currently serves as the general secretary of the Home Based Women Bangles Workers Union, Hyderabad (HBWBWU).

Naseema has deep burn wounds on her face and neck. She was bending forward while doing jurrai work one day when the flame from the gas burner rose all of a sudden and caught Naseema in its path.

The range of injuries and illnesses that can be contracted due to the nature of work is rather wide.

Rehana is a 35-year-old woman who used to work the bhatti (makeshift oven) that shapes glass shards into circular bangles. One day, pieces of glass entered her eyes and eventually she lost her eyesight. “Instead of providing free health facilities or some compensation, the contractor did not even pay a month’s salary,” she narrates.

“Squatting for more than eight hours every day has caused arthritis and joint pain,” say Shabna, 30, and Naseema, 28.

Naseema has deep burn wounds on her face and neck. She was bending forward while doing jurrai work one day when the flame from the gas burner rose all of a sudden and caught Naseema in its path. The fan in the room was switched off — as is the practice, to ensure that the flames don’t flicker — and Naseema sustained severe burn wounds. Many women workers claim that suffocation, claustrophobia and even losing consciousness at work are usual. Most take it in their stride: grab some fresh air, have a glass of water and return to work.

With the path to earning a pittance marked by such danger, why do women still engage in bangle making?

To put it simply, life.

Kausar is now aged 40 but she started working when she was hardly 13. At 15, she was married off. Before she turned 20, she had become a mother. Household expenses continued to grow as Kausar gave birth to six children. In such tender years, she was forced into making bangles to make ends meet.

“I do the task of boond,” says Kausar. She explains how she uses a tool which has a design carved on it to stamp the design on a bangle. But to do that, she first has to dip the tool in chemicals such as thinners, oil and glitter. Prolonged and sustained exposure to such chemicals induces asthma and Kausar, too, became a victim. Her thumbs have also been damaged because of her job. She works on 15 to 20 tora daily but the money she earns from them is not enough to meet her financial demands.

“Bangles are so beautiful, the most precious work of art,” says a wistful Kausar. “But nobody knows about the back-breaking work involved and the suffering and pain that bangle artisans go through.”

Barriers to betterment

Although most women find themselves in the same boat, contractors ensure that they cannot unionise to press for better terms and conditions.

“Home-based workers are scattered, unorganised and work independently. Very often they do not have linkages with each other,” explains Zehra Khan, general secretary of the Home-Based Women Workers Federation (HBWWF). “In the past, they had no platform to unite and to think about their collective issues either.”

Women workers are often barred by contractors from joining any union or movement. In case they do, they are abandoned and work is taken away from them.

“A large majority of women workers are unskilled and only a small number is equipped with some training in bangle-making that they learn from their elders during bangle making at their homes,” explains Yasmeen Siddiqi, general secretary of the Welding Workers Union, Hyderabad.

“Women are traditionally not allowed to step out of their homes and go work at a factory. They are restricted to the four walls of their homes. But this industry allows them to earn a living while staying at home.”

Yasmeen has been engaged in the bangle industry for the past 25 years. Being a widow, she is the sole breadwinner of the family. Her daughter, seven years old, assists her in the work of sadai and katai. But even she is wary of the contractors. “They have an impolite attitude with workers,” she asserts.

Meanwhile, Nasreen, Rehmat, Shakeela and a few other female workers also complain of theharsh attitude of factory workers. They are harassed if they demand any increase in their remuneration. If they ask for a loan, the contractor lends them money but binds them to work at a place until they can pay off their debt. Social benefits such as old-age pension, funds, death, disability and accident insurance are not provided to women workers either.

“There is absolutely no facility available to workers in factories,” claims Rehan Yousafzai, president of the All Hyderabad Churi Welding Contractors Workers Union. “Workers especially women and child workers are vulnerable to diseases such as rheumatic pain, respiratory problems, tuberculosis and eye infections.”

For Zehra Khan, the issue comes back to recognising more than five million homed-based women workers in the country as “workers” and handing them their due rights as per the constitution and the labour laws of the land. The women working in the bangles industry are not the only ones who work from home; many others are similarly employed in manufacturing shoes, garments, hosiery items, carpets, etc. Although their lines of work might differ, the problems faced by women are rooted in the same legal lacunae.

Currently, workers in the informal economy as well as those in the home-based sector are not covered by any labour laws. Nor does any definition of “home-based worker” exist as part of any statute. Therefore, the terms of their working conditions are not regulated by any law or regulation. Rates for work carried out cannot be renegotiated either; workers either accept the paltry sums being offered to them by a contractor or look for another job.

Similarly, labour protection, social security coverage and provision of safety and health services and benefits are not extended to the informal sector, including the home-based sector. Therefore, they are unable to access the services, facilities, rights and benefits that they ought to as part of the labour force.

“As soon as the policy of home-based workers gets practically implemented in the country, it will open new vistas of progress and prosperity for these women,” argues Advocate Rubina Brohi, member of the Sindh Human Rights Commission and regional coordinator of the Aurat Foundation. “The identification and recognition of home-based workers and mainstreaming of home-based workers into national economies would increase their productivity and help bolster trade and industry.”

“The immediate demand of home-based workers is to be recognised as workers, covered under EOBI and social security schemes and be provided modern vocational training to add value to their work,” says Khalid Mahmood, executive director of the Labour Education Foundation.

But such demands can only come to fruition if women workers can come together in organised forms and press for their demands.

“Home-based workers, including the women working in the bangle industry, should have the right to make their labour unions and elect their collective bargaining agents,” asserts Zehra Khan.

The writer works as a research coordinator at REACH. She can be contacted at sadiawali@hotmail.com

A silver lining for home-based workers

A national policy on home-based workers has been prepared by the Ministry of Women’s Development in collaboration with the Ministry of Labour, and various stakeholders including workers unions and home-based workers.

The salient features of the policy are:

• Definition and equality of legal status
• Equality of treatment and wages
• Skills training enhancement
• Access to credit, land ownership and assets
• Access to marketing channels and linkages
• Issuance of smart cards
• Enhance the quality and number of women employment in Pakistan with the ultimate goal of economic empowerment of women in rural and urban areas
• Right of association and collective bargaining
• Health and occupational safety standards at the workplace
• Social security benefits
• Literacy, basic and adult education
• Registration of home-based workers

The policy has been forwarded to the Sindh cabinet for approval and implementation in the province. Sindh Labour Department Director Gulfam Nabi Memon explains that after the passage of 18th Amendment in 2011, provinces had got the right to enact laws as per their local requirements.

“We have further improved the definition of ‘worker’. A section has been added to the standing order which said that a contract worker would not be required to do manufacturing jobs. Moreover, permanent and contract workers would enjoy same privileges,” says Memon. “Presently out of 12 laws, 10 have been approved by the Sindh government while two laws are under rectification (The Employment Act of Children and Payment of Wages Act). — S.W

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, December 25th, 2016