April is marked and celebrated as the Dalit History Month in India. On the 14th of this month Babashabeb’s 135th birth anniversary will be celebrated. This piece is in honour of Babasaheb’s legacy of labour organizing and pro-labour legal reforms. April also stands for an essential landmark event for industrial workers and, more specifically, Dalit women workers in the Indian garment industry as in April 2022, the Tamil Nadu Common Workers’ Union (TTCU) signed the Dindigul Agreement along with the supplier company Eastman Exports and buyer brands H&M, Gap and PVH corporation. TTCU is a Dalit women workers-led textile workers’ union. It is an independent Dalit women workers’ union committed to end gender-based violence and harassment (GBVH), wage theft and caste-baseddiscrimination in garment factories, with a membership of 13,000 workers.
Rapidly changing production cycles with the most recent ultra-fast fashion trends in the readymade garment industry make the target pressure fall upon the workers in the industry. It is one of the labor-intensive industries that gained much grounding in India in the late twentieth century. It became more widespread with the liberalization of the economy and the spreading of the industrial clusters, which feminized the cheap workforce. The sector currently has a job creation capacity of 1.2 million workers, of which only 10 per cent comprise factory workers. The wages in the industry, an export-oriented and demand-driven sector, have remained low and stagnant. India’s garment manufacturing relies on smaller and informal firms compared to large-scale factories in Bangladesh and Vietnam, to whom India has also lost in competition for this sector’s growth.
Smaller and informal industrial production organization by the manufacturers/suppliers disables worker organizing and has left the workers’ bargaining power weak. With the disintegration of the organized textile mills in India during 1980s and the coming up of the readymade garment (RMG) industry. A feminized workforce entered in the latter, with regional differences the factories in the southern region were more feminized and male-dominated workforce in factories ofthe northern clusters. The factories in Tamil Nadu have historically been disproportionately reliant on Dalit workers and more specifically RMG has been reliant on Dalit women workers. In these factories, gender-based violence has been and continues to be rampant. It is often used as a means of coercive disciplining to increase productivity and discourage labour organizing on the shop floor. This social disciplining or racialized control is established on workers using their other identities along with gender, like caste or religion.
In this context, Dindigul agreement had come as the culmination of the Justice for Jeyasre campaign. This campaign was launched for Jeyasre Kathiravel, a Dalit woman worker, member and worker organizer of TTCU. She was sexually harassed on the shop floor and murdered by thesupervisor at one of the leading exporters named NatchiApparels of Eastmen Export group. After this horrific incident, many women workers in the same factory came out and reported the abuse and harassment they faced at the hands of the management, supervisors and coworkers. This was built out as a protest led by TTCU, which organized workers against the caste-based discrimination and gender-basedviolence faced by workers in the industry, specifically at Eastman Exports. International alliance groups like the Asia Floor Wage Alliance (AFWA) and the Global Labour Justice-International Labour Rights Forum (GLJ-ILRF) aided this union’s muscle and voice and played an instrumental role in bringing the brands on board for negotiation.
There is a pervasive problem of gender-based violence and harassment in the industry across tiers of production and regions, as highlighted in the report Unbearable Harassment(2022) by the Society for Labour and Development. However, it goes unreported and unheard due to the inculcated fear among workers as they are primarily subordinate to their perpetrators, supervisors or line managers. Ineffective formal grievance redressal mechanisms on the shopfloor only leave workers in a more vulnerable position as they report incidents of harassment, and no action is taken against the perpetrator; instead, they receive a counteraction for reporting.
The Dindigul agreement creates conditions for a union-led initiative to end GBVH on the shop floor of Natchi apparels. On the global standards of ILO C190, it recognizes GBVH as a wide range of behaviours and harms, including economic harms. It includes conflicts at the workplace linked to conflicts beyond work and the GBVH at the intersection of other forms of discrimination such as migration status or religion and caste. It works on the AFWA’s approach of training, shopfloor monitoring and remediation and anti-retaliation protection, all of which are led by TTCU.
In 2023, on the completion of one year, in its review, it was reported that there was now a social dialogue between the union and the management of Eastman Exports. In 2024, the review of the second year also showed positive responses on the following up of the agreement; however, the Apparel division has seen a decline in employment due to the decline in sourcing. Report suggests that this raises questions for rewards for suppliers following human rights practices and the choice of the buyer companies to buy from these suppliers to encourage them or to avoid them and discourage. In 2024, as the state president of TTCU, Divya Rakhini posted on her social media accounts that the Tamil Nadu government’s social welfare and women empowerment and labour welfare and skill development secretaries and expressed intentions to recommend it as ‘best practice’ across industries and the state. Divya says, “Freedom of association is fundamental to gain dignified work for all women workers— it is the pathway for women to claim their rights, raise their demands, and ensure safe and equal workplaces. It is inspiring to see the government recognising this model for wider change.”
In late 2024, at ISST, we spoke to women workers at the NCR hub in Kapashera, Delhi. In our discussion with them about gender-based violence, they reported that casual harassment is commonplace on the shop floor. Supervisors resort to sexual innuendos or use gendered or casteist slurs to comment on their appearances and their productivity. The Home and the World of Work (2025), a report by Cividep, highlights the continuum of violence faced by garment workers at home and workplace. It discusses the systemic and exploitative cycles of caste, class and gender that trap women in such conditions.
When the large-scale exploitative practices and GBVH in the industry remain intact, the Dindigul agreement appears to be a small win. However, it stands as a reminder of the fight of Dalit women workers under the banner of TTCU, who continue to strive against the discriminatory, gendered and casteist-capitalist production regimes. It also serves as a reminder that any international activism- consumer or alliance building- can only be effective if workers have actual associational strength premised upon freedom of association.As the trade unions have legitimacy under Article 19 (C) of the constitution. For this reason, it becomes more important to contextualize the agreement within the Dalit History Monthand the struggles of the industrial workers. The struggle of Dalit women workers should be central to all movements, Dalit, feminist and labour alike.
Areesha Khan is a research associate at the Institute of Social Studies Trust.
