‘Disconnecting’ an eye-opening docu – Film screenings spur IT workers to scrutinise labour rights

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CHENNAI, India, June 16, (Agencies): It’s a matinee show and the film is not a blockbuster, but the small audience sitting on plastic chairs in a community centre in India’s Tamil Nadu state are watching nevertheless.

Staring at the flickering screen are men and women in their early 20s, who work six to eight-hour shifts, six days a week, for various electronic companies in Sriperambadur, an industrial hub near the port city of Chennai.

Most Sundays they forgo a bit of extra sleep to watch in this tiny room, the struggle of thousands of workers who suddenly lose their jobs or become exploited by ruthless bosses.

“It’s not something I thought could happen. If I was in that situation, I really wouldn’t know what to do,” said V Kumaresan, an engineering graduate who has just joined the workforce.

For the past month, workers’ rights group Cividep India has been screening films about labour issues on the wall of the centre in an effort to encourage electronics and IT workers to meet and discuss labour laws, workplace abuse and exploitation.

More than 4.3 million people are employed in India’s electronics and IT hardware sector with roles in manufacturing, sales and marketing, repairs and maintenance of mobile phone components and accessories.

The bulk of the workforce in the electronics industry works on factory assembly lines, making chips for mobiles, assembling smartphones, checking and packing finished products.

With the sector attracting young workers, many of them straight out of high school, there is a danger that abuses go unreported because of a lack of knowledge about their rights, campaigners said.

“The need for workers to stay connected with each other and clearly understand labour laws that impact them was felt after the Nokia crisis, where thousands lost their jobs overnight after the company shut shop,” said Jasoon Chelat from Cividep India.

She said most companies operating in Tamil Nadu discouraged freedom of association. “The worker is often isolated and unaware,” Chelat told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Screened

The documentary screened last Sunday, “Disconnecting People”, was made by a trade union after Finnish firm Nokia closed down its Sriperambadur factory in 2014 — one of its biggest mobile phone assembly plants globally.

The film featured the aspirations of young job seekers and their fascination with working in a big company. It also captured their heartbreak and helplessness at being let go.

“They (workers) are all equally vulnerable, being part of global supply chains. The precariousness of jobs and exhausting working conditions are seen in these sectors,” research scholar Madhumita Dutta, who speaks on behalf of the workers in the film.

Cividep said it planned to screen a range of labour rights documentaries as part of its initiative to highlight the conditions of workers across the globe.

“I didn’t know that providing food to employees or dropping them back after work was mandated by labour laws,” said R. Sasikala, who works on an assembly line for 5,000 rupees ($74) a month.

“I just thought the company was being nice and it was compensation for my low salary. This film was an eye opener,” she said after the screening.

Also:

YANGON: Myanmar’s film censorship board said Wednesday it banned the screening of a love story featuring an ethnic leader over fears it could derail an ongoing peace process with the country’s rebel armies.

The ban highlights the lingering limits on free speech in the former junta-run country, despite its new civilian government led by democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi.

The Austrian-directed film, “Twilight Over Burma: My Life as a Shan Princess,” is set in mid-20th century Myanmar. It tells the true story of an Austrian woman and her marriage to a Shan prince who was arrested in the wake of the 1962 military coup before dying in mysterious circumstances.

The film was supposed to be screened at the opening night of an international human rights film festival in Yangon Tuesday, where policemen remained posted the following day.

“We were worried and afraid that unnecessary problems could arise because of this (film) while we are working on achieving national reconciliation,” said Thida Tin, deputy chairman of the Ministry of Information’s 15-member film review committee.

She told AFP the board was concerned about ruffling feathers while Suu Kyi’s administration prepares for a major peace dialogue with ethnic rebel groups, who have fought lengthy civil wars with the national army and accuse it of rampant rights abuses.

Conflicts continue to rage in several border regions after a ceasefire pact signed last year failed to include all of the country’s fighters.

The censorship will come as a disappointment to many in Myanmar’s budding film community, where there were hopes that Suu Kyi’s leadership would usher in a new era of artistic freedom.

“It is the first time in four years one of our films didn’t pass the censorship committee,” the festival’s founder, Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi, told AFP.

Under the junta all books, films and news reports were vetted for content considered inflammatory or damaging to the regime.

The former semi-civilian government that ended outright junta rule in 2011 lifted a number of censorship laws and web restrictions.

But criticism of the army remains a sensitive subject as it is still a powerful presence in Myanmar, with control over key ministries and a quarter of parliament seats.

 

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