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It is to be noticed that there are protests being observed from a long time in the premises of the National law university, Delhi. The agenda for the protest is to reinstate the former housekeeping staff although the management and workers do not have concurrent views on the same it is necessary to hear both the sides.
The IssueIt was on 31st December 2019, that the housekeeping staff was verbally told that their services are no longer required as the tenure of the contract has come to an end. This incident shook the life of 55 housekeeping staff members as they were a part of NLU -D family for a period of 12 years and sudden denial of service by the administration was very shocking on the part of workers. On the other hand, the university released a new tender which was later given to RMG and the terms of the contract were quite challenging as only 36 workers were to be deployed for maintaining the whole university whereas according to the assessment done by the university itself the housekeeping staff must have at least 71 members as per the PwD and also the new contractor did not have any plans on reinstating the former employees. This act of administration and contractor was not acceptable to the workers and also the student community of the university therefore on 4th January they sat on a protest and on 10th February a huge gathering of students was observed in front of the gates of NLU-D, it is to be noticed that administration in a meeting with the workers has asked them to bring a written order by the Delhi Government and after which they will be more than happy to employ the former housekeeping staff but on 14th February when the order was signed by the Hon’ble Labour Minister, Mr.Gopal Rai to reinstate the former housekeeping staff and to increase the number of housekeeping staff as per the guidelines issued by PwD. But the University paid no adherence to the order issued by the Hon’ble Labour Minister and therefore denied any type of employment to the former housekeeping staff and just to show some sense of humanity they will ask the present contractor to look for alternate employment for their former housekeeping staff.
The Administration’s side
The administration of NLU -D has already made itself very clear on the legal part of this issue where they have clearly said that there does not exist any employer-employee relationship between the workers and the administration as ‘university never hire workers; it only hires services’ further the university in its statement cited an apex court judgement Bharat Heavy Electricals v Mahendra Prasad Jakhmola& Ors. Where the test was laid down to find a relationship between the employer and employee and there exists no such relation as neither the university directly pays off to the workers nor they control their services. The further university also stated that the order issued by the Hon’ble Labour minister violates the autonomy enjoyed by the institution and for the number of workers to be deployed they have mentioned that it was observed that the number of workers was already more than required and also the university also tried to help the workers by providing them alternate employment opportunity solely on humanitarian measures and also few of them were asked to work again for the University but this move was not accepted by the workers, therefore, they are helpless.
The worker’s side
The workers after doing a great struggle in getting orders from the Hon’ble Labour minister were still disappointed as the university did not pay any importance to that order and also when the workers went to the university gates with the order in their hand were told to go back by the guards as no one from the administration is going to entertain them and later police were called by the administration and the whole issue was told by the workers to the police and they agreed that they will allow the supervisor and a student representative Ekta to go and talk to the administration but later when the administration denied to this step then the two of them were forced to go away and later were detained by the police and were released with a warning that if they were to be seen around the university, they will be charged under sec 144 or CrPC and sec 188 of IPC. The workers were very disappointed with these incidents as they worked in the university for 12 years and achieved a great success by getting a rank of 3 in the swatch campus ranking.
In a solidarity statement issued by the workers-student community of NLU-D, it was mentioned that the claims given by the administration were pointless as there existed a relationship of employee-employer as the services were fully controlled by the registrar and the wardens and also after the termination of the contract, these workers were asked to work for few more days and were directly paid by the administration itself, this clearly establishes the relationship of employer and employee and further, in this statement, it was also mentioned that the university’s contention that the order issued by the Hon’ble labour minister violates the Autonomy of the university is totally pointless as Autonomy as described in Education commission report 1996, is :
The freedom of college to:
Determine its own course and syllabi;
Prescribe rules of admission subject, of course, to the reservation policy of the state government and evolve methods of evaluation and to conduct the examination.
And also university is funded on many occasions by the state government therefore it is totally pointless that it violates the autonomy of the institution.
Conclusion
It is observed that the student body, the elected-committee members and also the alumni’s are in solidarity with the workers and the act of university to provide alternate employment to its housekeeping staff is totally pointless as the workers have earlier denied the same offer made by the university and also the new contract does not seem to be valid as it does not meet the requirements and also the amount on which the contract is signed very less as compared to pay 71 employees that are required to maintain the cleanliness in the campus as assessed by the administration itself. It was also seen that several committees of NLU-D like oversight committee, social inclusion committee, legal services committee and many other committees and all the batches currently studying in NLU-D and also the alumni’s have shown solidarity with the workers as they have struggled for their rights in spite of several economic and social difficulties.
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