BONDED EMPLOYEE

BONDED  EMPLOYEE

Human Rights either by an organisation or a nation or the society, want all forms of bonded labour to be abolished. This is desired also.

The dark ages and age of slavery is long gone. The bonded labour concept continued with the Jamindari era, and is still in practice in some places. They could be in small factories, brick kilns, tea stalls, dhabas, even homes.

Poor people take loans from moneylenders for various occasions, and when unable to payback, the moneylender usually grabs whatever house / property he can. In absence of property / house he takes a family member to work as labourer to pay off the loan. The rate of interest is so high that paying off the loan by this method does not happen in the person’s lifetime. The holder of the bonded person can ‘sell’ the person to another holder and now the bonded person works for the new ‘master’.

All the above is well known, and several laws are in place to prevent this happening, punish the perpetuator and free the bonded person. Hundreds of NGO;s are on the lookout for a slice of action in this regard.

A New kind of Bonded Labour ?

Sometimes the loan giver takes over the creditors land, and if it is much less than the loan + interest amount, he takes a person also as repayment. This person has to work on the said land and if the land is sold, he goes to the new owner along with the land. The land and person is one package now ! A LAND SLAVE !

Most persons may feel very bad about such a case, and several organisations helped by the law shall go about setting that person free.

Now look at another case …

 A person has worked in an Indian company for several years. His service rules when he joined employment were laid out by the ownership management which was fully Indian. Over the years the ownership share has been changing, and now a large portion of ownership is in foreign hands.

Without taking his consent (or of any other employees) he has also been transferred to the new owners  along with the company, its building, land, factory and shares. Now his present and future are being decided by the new masters as they deem fit, according to their business ethics. With this arrangement, he along with all the other employees has been rendered to the same status as “land slave”.

In case of a takeover, the buyers offers to buy shares from existing shareholders at some price. The shareholders can refuse to sell. But the employee has no such option. He is “Sold” to the new owners along with the shares and Company.

                                  

Is the employee not like a “Land Slave” in such cases  ???