Agricultural labourers and poor peasants from 25 talukas, particularly Marathwada and the famine-struck districts in the State, migrate every year to sugar factories during the harvesting season. These workers are mostly nomadic tribes and other backward classes of which 40 per cent are women. They are recruited by sugar factories through contractors.

Labour laws such as Bombay Industrial Relations Act, Minimum Wages Act, and Worksmen Compensation Act are applicable to them but rarely implemented. In spite of directives from theBombay High Court and industrial courts, contractors and factory owners do not follow the laws.

Katre maintains, every year hundreds of workers lose their limbs and some even their lives in the hazardous working conditions. None of the victims has been paid any compensation by the law because no muster rolls are maintained. Working hours are long with no holidays or leave compensation. Workers are duped under the pretext of deduction of installments of advances paid to them, Katre alleged. Successive governments were indifferent to the regularisation of their working conditions, he said.

During the last 18 years, workers had gone on strike thrice but resumed work after a settlement for wage rise and the assurance for implementation of labour laws.

This year, even as the cane crushing season in the State has begun, the workers have opted to stay in their villages. They are seeking a wage hike and application of labour laws. Talks between the unions, the State Government and Maharashtra State CooperativeSugar Factories Federation are on.

The inter-union rivalry has worked to the contractors' advantage. Some unions are supported by Deputy Chief Minister Gopinath Munde and his rival Babanrao Dhakane, MLC. Contractors who had supported Dhakane, have switched over to the BJP-dominated union and they hold sway over the workers.

As such, this time too only the wages may be revised, Katre said and the workers will not stand to gain long-term benefits.