Recommendations
Our top 5 recommendations to the AutoSector, various government agencies and other stakeholders
Policy recommendations to the top 10 automobile brands
1. OEM boards to take responsibility for worker safety in their deeper supply chain.
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2. Create a joint industry-level task force with SIAM/ACMA (with any agreed participation from SII).
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3. Advocate to the government to make BRSR mandatory for all auto sector brands irrespective of ownership structure, for a level playing field and better transparency.
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4. Strategic international compliance and reporting annually on Indicator 8.8 of SDG8 (the only SDG indicator about worker safety).
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5. Set up mechanisms to ensure that workers' voices and feedback in the entire deeper supply chain are heard
Operational recommendations to the top 10 automobile brands
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1.Map the deeper supply chain to be able to take effective action.
2. Create, publish, and implement a Supplier Code of Conduct (SCoC) that covers NGRBC, ESIC and other compliance requirements.
3. Include all non-permanent workers in their own factories in the OSH Policy statement at par with permanent workers.
4. Improve transparency and accountability of accident reporting in the supply chain, weed out habitual offenders and commercially reward the safest factories.
5. Initiate/strengthen effective ground-level actions, e.g., surprise worker safety audits and worker training.
Recommendations to SIAM and ACMA
1. Bring the OEMs, suppliers and experts together for effective ideation and implementation plans to prevent accidents in the auto sector deeper chain, while also improving productivity.
2. Set up a permanent joint safety team/working group of SIAM and ACMA, with SII’s participation as required, to showcase good practices and train members on strategic and tactical costs of accidents and how to reduce them.
3. Establish industry standards for safety in auto sector manufacturing.
4. Integrate worker safety and health as core organisational values of its members, fitting with their sustainability claims.
5. Support SIAM and ACMA members in complying with NGRBC for long-term business success and compliance.
Recommendations to central governments
1. Notify Rules for OSH&WC Labour Code and remove confusion in States and ensure both business-friendly parts of the codes (e.g. working hours) and labour friendly parts (e.g. annual check-ups) are implemented.
2. NITI Aayog’s SDG India Index should include OSH and State-wise update on ‘promote safe and secure working environment’.
3. Make significant progress in fulfilling the precursor steps to complete the development of and the scheduling of the public release of India’s National Action Plan on Business and Human Rights (NAP) clear.
4. Strengthen OSH Institutions for improving occupational health and safety in the country and thereby labour productivity and MSME professionalism.
5. Use data from ESIC and state level accident information to identify hotspots for accidents and introduce nationwide measures to reduce accidents, injuries, death and work related illnesses.
Recommendations to state labour ministries
1. Use data from ESIC to determine selection of factories for inspection and conduct safety surveys and studies across sectors and sizes of factories especially the auto sector.
2. Create a reliable accident/injury reporting and governance system, and use it for constant continuing improvements, including strengthening of ISH in the states to improve factory inspections (irrespective of their new role as ‘facilitators’) and penalties for repeat offenders.
3. Set up a confidential helpline for workers to report unsafe conditions and accidents in factories.
4. Introduce a practical policy and mechanism for safety training of contract and migrant workers.
5. Set up expert committees to study and recommend improvements to worker safety for better business/labour productivity in the state and to ensure implementation of the recommendations.
Recommendations to ESIC
1. Improve the ESIC Act of 1948 preamble to include ‘quality’ in it. (The idea that ESIC is to provide certain social insurance services is now 70+ years old, and ESIC should have added focus on ‘quality of services’ decades back)
2. ESIC should establish a ‘process re-engineering cell,’ given the nature of business, to make the process worker-centric. (All large service organisations need constant customer feedback-driven incremental and non-incremental process improvements. The absence of this unit within ESIC is a missed opportunity)
3. Improve proactive healthcare for 3.5 crore IPs by leveraging technology and using ESIC’s structured and unstructured national data on sickness, injuries and death of workers to identify hot spots of these incidences and focus on ESIC’s limited resources, thus reducing misery for millions of Indians and costs for ESIC. (Using big structured and unstructured data of even the last 3/5 years with ESIC can be a game-changer for 130m+ Indians who ought to depend on ESIC and for improving business professionalism needed for Make in India)
4. Improve ESIC compliance, e.g. Post-Accident Registrations (PARs), among businesses, especially MSMEs, through increased automation, better MIS and increased penalties.
5. Cover Gig/Platform workers, possibly one crore, and informal workers (9cr+); but not at the cost of services to currently covered IPs, which are already not adequately provided, and at the same premium levels, funded by state/employers, as the current formal sector IPs. (Workers at wages of Rs21,000 and below should not subsidise other workers at similar/lower wages while employers do not their responsibility).