Introduction
The current article focuses on the absence of documentation and registration of employees, mostly made up of the informal class of workers, who are known as the invisible labour workforce since they cannot be discovered to be recognised as being legally employed. As the name implies, because of the nature of their work—daily wage jobs in the informal sector—they are hardly ever recognised for their labour because it is temporary. Additionally, contractors avoid their obligations to these workers by failing to enrol them in the organization’s muster rolls, which completely ignores their presence and makes them appear invisible. This also offers benefits for the business.
Daniels created the phrase “invisible work” in the middle of the 1980s to describe the forms of women’s volunteer and domestic work that had been economically and culturally disregarded. Since then, scholars have used this phrase to refer to a wide variety of labour, but there is still debate about what “invisibility” actually means and how it is created. It contends that three overlapping sociological processes—here referred to as cultural, legal, and geographical mechanisms of invisibility—make employment invisible.
Each of these strategies hides the fact that work is done and so adds to its economic devaluation, even if their functions and degrees vary. In the end, this updated understanding of invisible work gives academics a fresh analytical tool to sort through the institutions that create and perpetuate disadvantage for workers.
This article aims to understand the concept of the “invisible workforce,” the reasons and the environment that led to its creation, the gender perspective related to the topic, and the obstacles faced by them during the course of their employment, even though they put in full work hours. These workers are ripped off from their rights, which were established for their own benefit.
Page Contents
Women’s Participation In The Invisible Labour Force
Over the past 20 years, India’s female labour force participation rates have been appalling. Its present participation rate, which will be 18% in 2020[1], is the lowest in South Asia and much below the 45% global average. Women’s employment involvement has decreased despite rising Gross Domestic Product (GDP), increased educational attainment, rising family incomes, and reducing fertility.
Even worse, during the past ten or so years, the gender participation gap has been becoming worse and worse. Furthermore, there are noticeable differences in the rates of women entering the labour force in rural and urban areas (26.4% for rural women versus 20.4% for urban women), and stark differences are seen across Indian states[2].
Women’s decisions to enter the workforce are influenced by factors on both the demand and supply sides as well as current sociocultural and gender stereotypes. Numerous factors, such as marital status, the number of children they have, caste, religion, gender, a lack of required education and occupational skills, and workplace discrimination, affect women’s ability to work. Women continue to work in appalling conditions, have fewer career opportunities, and have less opportunities for education and professional development. They are overrepresented in the unorganised sector of the economy, particularly in jobs that are precarious, low-skilled, and poorly compensated and offer insufficient social security benefits. India’s gender-caste intersectionality, which shows up as differences in women’s employment outcomes, is equally disturbing.
Women’s access to paid labour is severely restricted since they are unable to stop providing unpaid care, which creates a vicious cycle. Even when they do find employment, it is typically low-paying, unstable, or transitory. Paid employment also does not free women since they are frequently forced to carry a “double burden” of paid and unpaid labour.
However, it is well known that women’s employment outside the home is essential to their well being.
Women not only conduct unpaid care work but also subsistence manufacturing of things, which keeps the world alive. The world is usually unaware that women labour in agriculture. Women make up over 50% of the agricultural labour force in the developing countries, and 60% in Asia and Africa. In spite of this, fewer than 20% of the world’s agricultural land is owned by women. Additionally, 60% of the world’s chronically hungry people are women and girls.
Effects Of Post-Covid On Women’s Invisible Labour
The ideas of “invisible labour” and “office housework” provide insight on society’s unwillingness to respect work done mostly by women. This occurs because presumptions about what women are inherently good at or interested in are sometimes mixed up with such employment. Women also don’t get paid for skills and concerns that are seen as inherent. As a result, when a female manager offers emotional support to her staff at a time of social crisis, it may be dismissed as “caretaking” rather than being praised as effective crisis management.
In the wake of racist violence, a Black woman manager may be praised for her “passion” but not for her time, leadership, or DEI expertise when she presents a panel on anti-racism.
Furthermore, because acknowledgement and compensation are indicators of worthwhile work, the fact that women’s leadership efforts aren’t being acknowledged and appreciated effectively devalues them. Naturally, women have always performed this work. But there is still a lot of this work to be done in this period of profound social upheaval, amid a global pandemic and a national reckoning with racism. Additionally, completing it is crucial for a company’s prospects.
According to Oxfam’s 2020 India Inequality Report, “On Women’s Backs,” women and girls in India perform 3.26 billion hours of unpaid care work each day, which amounts to an annual economic contribution of $19 lakh crore[3].
According to 2019 data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, women in India may spend up to 352 minutes every day on domestic tasks. Compared to males in the home, who generally dedicate 52 minutes each day to household duties, this is 577 percent more time[4].
The epidemic has only served to highlight this fact, to the point that one electoral promise in Tamil Nadu that everyone was talking about was a monthly income for housewives. While politician-actor Kamal Haasan initially pledged a monthly salary of 3,000, other parties picked up on the idea and pledged a secured income for women whose crucial labour remains unrecognised[5].
Lack of Registration
Many of these workers work primarily in the unorganised sector, so there is always a lack of proof of employment because they typically work on daily wages and even if they are permanently employed in any establishment, due to the lengthy lines, complicated forms that may not be in the local language, and the detailed documentation. One of the fundamental reasons why many workers deter from documentation and registration is the complexity of the process itself, the elongated lines, complex forms that may not be in the local language, and the detailed documentation.
Another factor is a lack of knowledge within the workforce, since many of them originate from rural regions and have limited access to education. Additionally, firms have several incentives to understate the number of employees they have.
The government provides a variety of social safety nets for workers, including welfare programmes for the unemployed, the PF (provident fund), and ESI (employees’ state insurance) plans for workers in the organised sector.
BOCW stands for Building and Other Construction Workers. In order to register under these programmes, the employers or contractors must disclose how many employees they have.
Employers benefit from the benefits associated with units employing fewer people than the thresholds established under various laws pertaining to factories, industry, etc. by underreporting their worker numbers and saving on compliance costs for social-security payments per employee and costs for employee perks (such as transportation and living expenses) under the Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act.
Thirdly, despite the fact that all businesses, factories, industries, and the like are required by law to register with the government, employees of these establishments are exempt from this requirement. This is possible since there is no legal requirement for small and medium-sized firms to track their personnel with a third party. Even big businesses in the organised sector have exploited this legal gap by contracting out a lot of their work or hiring contract workers. Contract workers and customers of outsourced services do not retain these employees on their official payroll since they do not consider them as their own. It is not necessary for the contractor delivering the labour to have a “official” third-party validated registration.
The Future: A Solution
To improve the standard of living for millions of Indians, India must start the process of formalising its economy. Approximately 92 percent of the 61 million jobs created in the two decades after liberalisation were informal, which leaves them without legal or social protection[6]. This situation must change if India wants to protect its workers against economic shocks, including during times of national emergency like COVID19.
Establishment and implementation of simpler systems that allow employees to self-register under employment-based social-security schemes, get an ID, and use that ID to receive welfare benefits like rations in particular states The new system could be based on worker databases—ad hoc government databases containing information about workers’ identities (Aadhaar, voter-ID), workplace location, native place, bank accounts, sector of work, and so on—that arose during the crisis to identify workers for cash transfers and to facilitate migrant workers’ travel.
By making the process of producing proof of employment easier for workers to complete and accepting verbal affirmations from employers as acceptable forms of proof (similar to kachcha receipts of work issued by contractors), as well as placing the burden of proof for challenging employment claims on the employer, it will be possible to ensure that many more workers are covered by social-security programmes.
Conclusion
By making the process of producing proof of employment easier for workers to complete and accepting verbal affirmations from employers as acceptable forms of proof (similar to kachcha receipts of work issued by contractors), as well as placing the burden of proof for challenging employment claims on the employer, it will be possible to ensure that many more workers are covered by social-security programmes.
In order to guarantee long-term protection for such invisible labour, the status quo ordinance has to be strengthened and incorporated into current laws in the form of a harsh, permanent regulation that is severely enforced. It would improve worker safety since they wouldn’t have to worry about losing out on benefits during a health emergency like the current pandemic or in everyday life.
Therefore, in order to keep the invisible workforce in check and prevent it from collapsing once more, it is crucial that we meet all of their needs and give them the resources they need to combat the crisis we are currently facing. In order to achieve this, a number of other rules must be strictly adhered to. And steps should be done to ensure a tranquil and organised working environment for our labour, which makes up the invisible labour workforce.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/983020/female-labor-force-participation-rate-india/.
[2] https://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/the-invisible-women-in-india-s-labour-market-101622636345192.html.
[3] https://www.oxfam.org/en/india-extreme-inequality-numbers.
[4]https://www.oecd.org/general/searchresults/?q=Work%20women%20in%20india&cx=012432601748511391518:x.
[5] https://m.economictimes.com/news/elections/assembly-elections/tamil-nadu/kamal-haasan-releases-mnm-manifesto-assures-income-for-women-by-developing-their-skills-says-no-to-doles/articleshow/81586112.cms.
[6] National Sample Survey Office, 2011-2012, http://mospi.nic.in/sites/default/files/publication_reports/nss_report_554_31jan14.pdf.
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