Violation of the Maternity Benefit Act and the Union’s Fightback
By Spandan, AIITEU Delhi NCR
The Maternity Benefit Act was passed in 1961 to protect the employment of women at the time of their maternity. The Act applied to every establishment that functioned as a factory, mine or plantation including all government establishments and all such establishments which employ people for the exhibition of equestrian, acrobatic and other performances.
Essentially, a positive attempt was made to not leave any place of work out of this provision and thereby bringing relief to working women and encouraging them to not permanently leave their work because of motherhood. The Act earlier provided a total of 12 weeks of maternity leave, that could have been availed starting from a maximum of 6 weeks before the delivery.
There was a constant demand for an increase in that phase, as the objective of women not leaving their jobs due to maternity was still not achieved on a large scale. This led to a much needed Amendment in the Act in 2017, that increased the total maternity leave phase to 26 weeks, which could be availed starting from a maximum of 8 weeks before the delivery. The Amendment also added a mandatory provision of creche facility for establishments where there were more than 50 women workers.
The amendments brought a much needed relief to the working women but at the same time it brought a popular criticism of it too. There were speculations that employers would discriminate against married women at the time of hiring, in order to avoid giving them maternity benefits (a 2019 study revealed that 46% of startups & SMEs didn’t want to hire female employees post the amendment to the Maternity Benefit Act).
But if we were to consider this criticism, it would simply be a criticism of private enterprises themselves where stakeholders would decide to cut down on the ‘unproductive time’ of their workers in order to maximise their profits. If we oppose progressive changes in labour laws with the logic of employers trying to reduce non productive time, then we are only supporting a trend where we allow cut downs on leaves, breaks, holidays and every instance of recreational time for workers.
Due to the absence of worker unions in the IT & ITeS sector, this is what has been happening in the name of employer-centric ‘office policies’. Even though the labour law defines a working day including ‘breaks’, the majority of companies internally choose to define an employee’s working day beyond the stipulated 8 hour work day and even define break times. If we argue that IT workers don’t need to unionise by merely ensuring a rule of law (let alone bringing necessary reforms in those) then we can simply argue that workers should be enslaved by private enterprises.
We saw an example of the same recently in the National Capital Region of the country. Our union, the All India IT and ITES Employees’ Union (AIITEU) was approached by an employee of a Gurgaon based BPO company named Randstad. They had been forcing her to step down as an employee in the last trimester of her pregnancy. She had informed us that a couple of months ago she was a top-performing employee. Since her delivery date was nearing, which would make her eligible for maternity benefits, she was being pressured in the office by being put on a ‘Performance Improvement Plan’ (PIP). She had also fallen sick in the office owing to her condition, and as a result, she was admitted to a private hospital which was not covered by the insurance agency partnered with the office.
She had applied for reimbursement of the medical bill paid by her in the hospital but was ignored. She had also applied for her maternity leave, which was legally about to start soon, alongside the medical documents as proof of pregnancy. The next day, she was informed by the office that there is no maternity leave policy in the company, and was given an ultimatum of a mere 4 days to choose between resigning or being terminated.
The union vehemently condemned this vile act by the company and firstly asked her to not resign, and assured her that she can’t be terminated, as it would be illegal. We then sent out a legal notice to her company naming the HR and the manager who had harassed her, with a 2 weeks time to respond to said notice.
After receiving the notice, their attitude flipped immediately. On the same day, she received a form by mail to apply for official reimbursement and within the next 24 hours, she received another mail approving her maternity leave — thereby agreeing to both the demands in 36 hours.
The All India IT & ITES Employees’ Union (AIITEU), has the privilege of congratulating our legal team on this success and the employee for reaching out to us and showing immense valour to put up the fight braving all odds. We would also like to add that the employee in this case was aware of her rights and did not resign under pressure and took the fight to the company by approaching the union.
We call upon all other employees of the IT & ITeS sector — suffering from the illegal and unjust policies of their companies — to unionise and fight for their rights!
