MORE than 32,000 substitute and temporary workers of the 25 State-run jute mills that were closed down recently have been denied compensation packages though many of them had worked at the mills for decades. Since the closure of the mills on July 1, the authorities laid off 24,886 permanent workers who are entitled to receive due wages, gratuity and severance pay based on gratuity. But no allocation was made for the 23,842 substitute (badli) and 8,463 temporary workers who toiled at the mills on a daily-wage basis.
The status of these workers has been clearly defined in Section 4(3) and 4(5) of Bangladesh Labour Law, 2006. According to the law, a worker can be regarded as “badli” if he is recruited in place of a permanent worker who remains absent temporarily. It also states a temporary worker is someone who is recruited for a temporary job that is to be finished within a limited period. Section 4(8) of the law says probation period for technical workers should be three months and that for non-technical workers six months, which can be extended up to a maximum of three more months under certain conditions.
The Bangladesh Jute Mills Corporation (BJMC) officials kept doing injustice to these poor workers by sacking them just prior to completion of their probationary periods and then re-appoint them later so they would never become permanent. These poor workers have not been paid arrears from July 1, 2015, to January 1 this year and also wages for six weeks last year.
Thus essentially a legal technicality kept the workers from becoming permanent to save costs. BJMC had many years to make its operations more efficient but was completely unable to do so — and the end result is that these workers are helpless before the law. While it is true that the government owes them nothing legally, morally it should provide them with at least a few months severance package to enable them to carry on with their lives. These hardworking workers should not have to pay the price for the inability of the BJMC officials to make their operations more efficient.
