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Blue workers are those categories of workers who typically take part in manual labor. They engage in different work, such as farming, manufacturing, logistics, construction, repair and maintenance, and retail. They may be doing skilled or unskilled work and are paid hourly or daily wages for their work. Blue-collar work contrasts with white-collar jobs, which are usually performed in an office environment and typically do not require manual labor.
In India, there are more than 400 million people who are part of this category of the workforce. With the expansion of the economy and millions of new entrants into the job market every year, their number grows daily. They chiefly work in the manufacturing, transport & logistics, caregiver and retail sectors. The blue & grey collar workers in India face unique problems and challenges. This scattered workforce in India has no single unifying platform to address their employment issues. The following section focuses on the challenges faced by blue and grey collar workers in India concerning employment, finding jobs, facing job scams, and accessing labor contractors, among others.
The Challenge
The following points describe some of the hurdles commonly faced by blue and grey collar workers in India.
Finding Employment
One of the biggest challenges for blue and grey collar workers in India is finding the job they want to do, ensuring that the job aligns with the skills they can offer, and accessing those jobs when they are available in the market. Getting regular work becomes difficult. The job search becomes a time-consuming, complex, and frustrating task. It is particularly challenging in the current times of the pandemic. Many businesses are shut, and the pandemic has forced everyone to take cost-cutting steps. This has led to rampant job losses. During the lockdown, migrants working in construction, manufacturing, logistics, mining, and maintenance jobs returned to their places of origin due to a shortage of work.
Job platforms and forums have made it much easier for white-collar workers to access job advertisements and opportunities. These platforms often require aspirants to upload their CVs in different formats. Blue and grey collar workers may not be able to apply through this process due to the inherent complexities. They may not have access to computers or the know-how of the conditions of the application process. They may also be intimidated by technology as most of them hail from rural areas and face language barriers. If they can converse only in their native languages, they cannot use most online platforms, as these may not support multilingual facilities.
They usually depend on informal referrals, labor contractors, and advertisements in local agencies to find potential work. It is a time-consuming, complex process with much uncertainty. They may remain unemployed for a long time till they can find a gig, resulting in decreased earnings.
Labor Contractors and Middlemen
Blue and grey collar workers often depend on labor contractors to find work opportunities. These contractors register the job seekers in their agencies and allocate them work. They are not the direct employers but act as a connecting point to companies, who approach them with requirements of human resources. Although these middlemen make it easier for workers to find job opportunities, they charge hefty commissions and push aspirants towards taking up low-paying jobs with the harshest working conditions.
Often, there are no discussions of minimum or overtime wages. Contractors offer blue and grey collar workers zero-hour contracts that provide no guarantee of a minimum number of working hours. They may not even guarantee consistent job opportunities, with the workers remaining idle for most of the time. With the rise in the number of jobseekers and no corresponding increase in opportunities, blue and grey collar workers register themselves with several contractors, multiplying their chance of exploitation.
There are at time nine layers of middlemen whom each gets a commission, and it is estimated that INR 6500 crores (USD 900 Mn) a year is siphoned off by these middlemen.
Job Scams
Job-hunting is a difficult task. The number of people who are entering the workforce is only increasing every day. With changing trends of increased mechanization, low job availability, skills mismatch, pressures of financial needs, etc., jobseekers are often desperate. As such, they become easy targets for job scams. Fraudulent recruiting agencies create fake jobs and portals to pull aspirants into their trap. They twist the labor laws into unfavorable conditions for the workers. They may promise high pay for illegal work to unsuspecting job seekers. Some exploit by getting the workers into low-paying jobs, punishing working conditions, debt traps, and even data theft.
Underemployment
Blue and grey collar workers usually engage in part-time jobs, working maybe for half a day for hourly wages. It results in them being idle for the rest of the time when they could be engaged in full-time work. It limits their earnings, affects their finances, and reflects a waste of their full potential. Sometimes, workers are engaged in jobs that do not reflect their actual skills and experience. The work that they find may not employ all their abilities or may provide them with low wages much below their financial needs. Such situations cause them to be underemployed, unable to apply their labor to its maximum potential. These situations lead to loss of potential earnings and lower job satisfaction.
Work-Life Balance
Blue and grey collar workers are usually underemployed. But there are instances of personnel working inhuman working hours, with inflexible schedules and no spirit of work-life balance. Blue-collar work usually entails round-the-clock operations. There is no 9-to-5 system. This unstructured system would be lucrative if the working conditions, pay, and availability was consistent. But workers with other commitments like family, children, and additional work find it hard to land an appropriate opportunity that ensures all these conditions are met.
Underpayment
Blue-collar work in India is one of the most underpaid sectors. The workers have to toil more for meager pay. They usually fall in the lower rungs of society, as far as an economic power is concerned. They depend on their wages to cover all their financial expenses. They have to pay bills and cover the basic needs of food, clothing, and shelter for their families. If they do not get work regularly or timely wages, they may face life-changing consequences. In such precarious situations, extortionary practices by contractors and exploitative employers make things worse. They become desperate for more work and fearful of losing income, putting up with all the harsh conditions of their work.
Automation
There is an ill-conceived notion that as industries are transitioning towards more automation, skilled jobs in manufacturing, warehousing, and agriculture will reduce and ultimately disappear until machines replace humans. Technology is like a double-edged sword. Although it may be disruptive for employment in the short term, it brings tremendous opportunities for new and better jobs. The economy adjusts itself by aiming for equilibrium between demand and supply. Leveraging technology to fit the new normal is the need of the hour.
Possible Solutions and Opportunities
The current trend in blue-collar work is shifting towards gigs where workers have the flexibility to be engaged in diverse sectors as per their skills and job availability. There is greater adoption of mobile technology in people’s lives. India has one of the highest numbers of smartphone users in the world. Now there are multiple opportunities for blue and grey collar workers to overcome challenges and boost their earnings. They have the option to look for jobs that pay their worth. They can break the stereotype that blue-collar employment is not stable, lucrative, or attractive.
While the world is recovering from the pandemic, businesses are finding their way back to their normal levels of economic growth. They are acclimatizing to remote work, online hiring, online service delivery, and other trends that the pandemic brought and fast-forwarded. Virtual hiring, training, and recruitment processes have surged. Sectors like e-commerce are booming, and with that comes the need for an effective logistics system. We see a steady rise in demand for goods delivery workers, warehousing staff, and personnel for food processing and grocery delivery. People are now looking for job opportunities nearer to home, as migration has slowed down.
Technology has emerged as the biggest savior for blue and grey collar workers in India. As an aspirational New India rises, companies are coming up with new technological interventions that leverage Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and other cutting-edge technologies to solve complex problems.
Let me now talk about our startup “Hands On”, which is an application that provides much-needed solutions for the employment challenges of blue and grey collar workers in India. Hands On uses the latest technologies to help blue and grey collar workers, gig workers, and hourly-wage workers connect with businesses looking for the best hires. It aids in creating the best job matches. It provides technology-based solutions for talent acquisition by incorporating multiple features that help both job seekers and employers make the job-matching process simple, effective, and quick.
Salient Features
–Jobs in your Mobile
It helps in the quick filling of positions. Almost everyone has a smartphone nowadays. This app is for blue and grey collar workers, catering to their needs and the intricacies of their situations. Blue and grey collar workers looking for a constant source of employment can start applying for work immediately. The whole process is smooth, quick, and very efficient in finding them jobs on short notice.
–Free to Use for Job Seekers
A blue-collar worker looking for a job can install this application for free. They can create their profile, input simple details, and begin searching for a job for free. There are search filters that make the process customized to their needs. The app also matches their skills to relevant jobs and stores them so they can apply anytime, this saves them the hassle of searching for jobs themselves.
–Freshness factor – Publishing Current Jobs
The app has fresh jobs only, we remove jobs that are more than 30 days old. It helps save time for job seekers from looking at expired jobs and who require work at short notice by filtering through jobs that are currently available.
–Geo-Location Job Match
Most blue-collar job seekers are not aware of the work opportunities around them, leading to a waste of time, unnecessary travelling, wage loss, or even moving far away from home. They face underemployment to compromise between their work and personal lives.
The app helps eliminate these situations as it recommends workers for those jobs near them according to their location. It would decrease transit expenses and connect job seekers with employers located nearer to their homes. Hands On scans your skills, talents, and experience and shows you the jobs that best fit your profile and location preference.
–In-app Chat Option and Multilingual Functionality
These features enable instant communication between workers searching for the perfect work and employers who are looking for the best hires. The app offers multilingual functionality (11 Indian languages) so that blue and grey collar workers have no issues conversing with employers and increase their chances of getting a job.
–Closing Gaps between Employer and Employee
The blue-collar job market often works on referrals, limiting its scope. The gap between the employer and the employee does not decrease, with both losing out on opportunities. With the Hands On application, the employer and the jobseeker are in charge of their profiles. They have the power to communicate directly with each other. The process is inclusive and transparent. It ensures that businesses become approachable, and employees take charge of their journey. All employers who post jobs are verified. There are no middlemen or contractors in the whole process. It reduces the chances of being exploited.
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