Labour and employment
| Philosophy of Social Sciences |
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Textbook
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Please read Chapter 2 in the NCERT Standard 9 textbook titled 'People as Resource' as a background to this chapter
Additional References
How the topic is discussed in NCERT Books
Useful websites
- Labour economics in Wikipedia
- Employment
- International Labour Organization (ILO) website. ILO is a United Nations Agency responsible for the area of labor
- Labour in India
- Planning Commision report on labour policy and laws in India
Reference Books
Teaching Outlines
Please describe the key ideas to be conveyed in this section. Also broken down in details by each idea
Key Idea - Introduction to Labour and Employment
Basic introduction to labour as a factor of production, the special features of labour vis-a-vis other factors of production
What are the key ideas to be covered
Learning objectives
To understand the basics of the concept of labour To understand the concept of division of labour
Notes for teachers
In Class 8, we studied about the various inputs needed in production. To recall, they are land, labour, physical capital and human capital. Labour and human capital are closely related, and this chapter explores both concepts in detail.
Labour refers to the actual time spent in production – working in factories, tilling the land, teaching in school etc. Labourer is not an abstract factor of production, labourers are people who want good jobs that pay them sufficient wages. They also want good working conditions including paid holidays, health care and regular training. India has 486.6 million (2012) people or 40% of its population in its labour force, which is the second highest in the world, after China. Of this, 53% are in agriculture, 19% are in industry and 28% in services (2011). The labour force consists of people between ages 15 years and 60 years.
Human capital refers to skills and abilities of people that are useful in production. People acquire these skills through investing in education and training. Several studies have shown that education is positively correlated with earnings, meaning that more educated people are likely to earn higher in the labour market. Health is also an important factor in contributing to human capital formation. Healthier people are more productive and therefore earn higher. Therefore, investments in education and health are important to raise human capital in the economy.
Division of labour refers to the process of separation of a work process into a number of tasks, and each task is performed by a separate person. It is most useful in mass production in factories, and is a basic principle of assembly line production. This leads to specialization because each person performs a specific task regularly, and so becomes skilled at that task.
Activity No 1 - Presentation and discussion on Labour and its features
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- What questions can you ask
- Assessments - incorporating elements of CCE
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Activity No 2
Identifying the breakdown of the work process in a modern factory.
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- Materials/ Resources needed - Pen and paper
- Prerequisites/Instructions, if any - None
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what-are-the-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-division-of-labour
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What factors would you consider in assessing if division of labour is useful or not? In many societies, division of labour is on the basis of gender, men go for 'outside work' which is paid for, while women do work that is not compensated. What are your views on this?
Key Idea 2 - Types of Labour: Bonded labour, child labour, organized and unorganized labour
What are the key ideas to be covered
Learning objectives
To understand the classification of labour
Notes for teachers
Productive and reproductive/unproductive labour are not used often now and this is not how labour is classified today. However this page has a discussion on these topics.
Activity No 1 - Presentation and discussion on bonded labour and child labour
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Swami Agnivesh has been a crusader against bonded labour in India
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good, short article on bonded labour in India.
Information for presentation and discussions
Bonded Labour
This is also called debt bondage. It refers to the situation when a person pledges his or her labour and services as repayment for a loan or debt. It is almost a form of slavery because of its exploitative nature.
Here is the story of Raju in West Bengal. Raju took a loan from a local landowner to get married to his wife, Rajitha. Twenty years later, his entire family was still in debt to the landowner. He and his wife work in the landowner's fields and their children work at the brick kilns. He says that one day even his grandchildren will work for the same landowner. There was no way to repay the debts. “We will be free only when we die”, he says. Raju also had no idea about the actual amount of his debts. Since the first loan, he had borrowed several times from the same landowner to buy medicines, repairs to his hut and basic subsistence. He has no access to any other form of credit. He and his family are forced to work 14+ hours a day, almost every day of the year with very little water and food to survive.
Despite legal abolition of bonded labour by the The Bonded Labour System Abolition Act (1976), bonded labour is still prevalent in many parts of India. There are few systematic studies of the extent bonded labour in India. The first such study was carried out by the Gandhi Peace Foundation and the National Labour Institute during May to December 1978, and found the number of bonded labourers to be 2.62 million (1981). Of this, 61.5% were from SC and 25.1% were from ST. A Supreme Court order in 1994 directed all state governments to ascertain the extent of bonded labour. This paper contains the full table, but the big picture that emerges is that there is a high concentration of bonded labourers in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh.
To help rehabilitate bonded labourers, the Ministry of Labour, GoI initially set an amount of Rs. 4,000 per labourer (contributed equally by the centre and state). The amount has since been revised a few times and was Rs. 20,000 in 2000.
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- What questions can you ask
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Activity No Presentation on child labour
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Child Labour This refers to the practice of engaging children in economic activity. In India, 12% of the population is engaged in child labour (2006). Child labour includes children between ages 5 years and 14 years. They are employed in many industries such as garments, footwear, brick kilns, stainless steel, hotels and textile shops. About 12.6 million children are engaged in hazardous occupations such as carpet weaving, gem polishing, glass blowing, match works, lead mining, stone quarrying, lock making and beedi rolling (Census 2001).
The National Child Labour Project is a Central Government scheme in 1988 that aims to rehabilitate working children. The programme aims to rescue children from hazardous industries and establishing special schools to provide children with skills they need to integrate into mainstream society, vocational training, supplementary nutrition, health services etc. As of January 2005, the NCLP scheme has expanded into 250 districts in 21 states, covering 42% of all districts in the country (Census 2001). As of today, 7311 special schools are in operation and 8.52 lakh children have been integrated into the mainstream schooling system. click for more information about this project
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- What questions can you ask
- Assessments - incorporating elements of CCE
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Key Idea #3 - Slave labour
What are the key ideas to be covered Modern day slave labour and slave trade (human trafficking) is a challenge to society
Learning objectives
Slave labour (apart from child labour and bonded labour) is still quite prevalent in todays world, to be sensitive to this issue
Notes for teachers
“The most widely used method of enslaving people around the world,” according toAnti-Slavery, is through bonded labour. “A person becomes a bonded labourer,” it says, “when their labour is demanded as a means of repayment for a loan”. It has been a method of control, imprisonment and exploitation of the poor for centuries and is today highly prevalent in South Asia, particularly India – the hub for the trafficking of women in the region. Rooted in the unjust caste system, it primarily affects the Dalits (or untouchables) and Adivasi (indigenous) people, who make up 9 per cent or more of India’s 1.3 billion population. The ILO estimates that almost 12 million people in the Asia-Pacific area are trapped in bonded labour, due overwhelmingly to debt. Bonded labour occurs because “of poverty and the existence of people who are prepared to exploit the desperation of others”. India, where bonded labour is rampant, boasts of a decade of 9 per cent growth, and yet because all wealth is concentrated in the hands of the elite and the aspiring, India has the highest percentage of malnourished children: the poor are growing in number, levels of inequality are greater than ever, desperate parents are selling their daughters and young women are being forced to take loans from unscrupulous “recruitment agents”.
source Truthout "Trading-women-for-profit"
Activity No Collect information about human trafficking in India
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Access to Internet
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- Any specific locations are more prominent as 'source locations'? Why
- Any specific locations are more prominent as 'destination locations'? Why
- Any connections between the above and the economic structures in society?
- Assessments - incorporating elements of CCE
- Question Corner
Activity No #
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- Relevant local connections - people, places and materials
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- What questions can you ask
- Assessments - incorporating elements of CCE
- Question Corner
Project Ideas
There are many movies that show life from the Industrial revolution days (which marked the rise of the secondary sector. Charles Dickens novels such as Oliver Twist or Charlie Chaplin movies such as Modern Times or The Kid
See a movie or read a book discussing the industrial revolution and write a one page review of the same. Share this by email with your friends.
Scene from Modern Times - Charlie Chaplin with the Eating Machine which was designed to reduce lunch/eating time of factory workers so they would work more!
Community Based Project
Identify the popular occupations in your village/town? Meet 1-2 members of each occupation/livelihood. Ask them questions related to their work -
- Skills required
- Is it seasonal work?
- Rough income ranges from that occupation
- What has been the increase/change in income over the last decade?
You can plan a 'photo essay' of this project, by taking photos of the workers, including in the practice of their occupation. You can create a slide show with photos and some description or even a small video combining photos and slides using openshot video editor