In the steel mills of Delhi, as the heat sizzles, workers faint

At noon, the patchy lawns in the centre of north Delhi’s Wazirpur Industrial Estate are teeming. Workers from Wazirpur’s steel mills have gathered in their lunch break in Raja Park. Dressed in grey and brown uniforms, a few in casual shirts, they sit on the lawns together to eat and chat. Some nap in the shade of trees. In a few minutes, the workers will return inside the steel mills to slog for hours beside furnaces running at 900 degrees celsius, and acid treatment units where breathing becomes hard.

Inside Wazirpur’s steel mills, in an operation that almost never stops, semi-finished slabs of steel are re-heated nearly to melting point, rolled into thinner, longer sheets, treated with acid, transported and introduced between rollers to again be compressed and squeezed. These steel sheets, once cut and polished, are used to make containers and vessels.

Blazing heat

Over 14,000 workers are employed here in hot rolling mills and cold rolling mills. Hot rolling process involves rolling the steel at extremely high temperatures, typically above 926 degree celsius, which is higher than steel’s recrystallization temperature. The cold rolling mill’s name is a bit of a misnomer as even in this process the temperature of the metal sheets reaches 50 to 250 degrees. With the furnaces taking long to fire up, most factory owners prefer running the furnaces 24 hours requiring workers to be on 12-hour shifts, often without a weekly off.

Last June, as the temperature in Delhi crossed 45 degrees and the heat made 12-hour shifts unbearable, Wazirpur’s workers brought the whizzing machines to a stop. Hundreds of them walked from plant to plant demanding what many take for granted – a minimum wage for skilled work, a payslip, an identity card. Organising themselves as the Garam Rolla Mazdoor Ekta Samiti, they asked the industry owners to recognize an eight-hour work shift and give them the health benefits that are legally due to them. For a brief period after last July, the employers relented, operating the plants in 8-hour shifts. But now, after a few workers who had continued resisting were fired, it is back to the 12-hour shift.

“In the summer, it gets so hot, I have seen workers faint,” said a young worker. “Several workers vomit. We have to walk several metres from the mill to even find water for them.”

Modern times

Sant Ram moved to Delhi from Faizabad in Uttar Pradesh as a 19-year-old. Employed in a hot rolling mill for 28 years, he said over the decades he had experienced work conditions get worse. “We used to have 8-hour work shifts. The mills used smaller furnaces then which did not get half as hot. Production was less but every 20-30 minutes the machines stopped and we could take a break too, compared to going on continuously for hours now,” he said, smiling widely as he spoke of his younger years.

Until 15 years ago, the units employed 12-15 workers each, Sant Ram recounted. “Things started changing in the year 2000. Bigger machines came then, but work got twice as hard. Now, the furnaces run almost at 1000 degrees. There are more of us working, 40 in each unit, but there is no time to breathe.”

Inside the industrial estate, dusty lanes are lined up with coiled steel sheets. The intense heat of the hot rolling process permeates till outside the thin walls of the mill. Most workers wear soiled denim gloves. A few of those who work in acid treatment units have rubber boots.

In a few of the cold rolling mills, cardboard sheets have been placed in front of the compressing machines. These are meant to intercept chunks of metal but the steel sheet still routinely breaks off in the rolling process, frequently injuring workers.

Shiv Kumar’s forearms, fingers, and even his waist are marked by cuts. He has worked in cold rolling mills in Wazirpur since 1985. He extends his right forearm to show how a tattoo of his nickname “Shammi” sits next to the marks of six steel chunks’ injuries. “When the steel sheet is compressed, it is at extremely high speed. When you stand next to the rolling machine, you are always at risk of small slivers breaking and piercing your hands and chest,” he said.

He said this is how it had always been in the cold rolling mills and that in his initial years in the industrial estate, he had witnessed instances of fatal injuries to workers being passed off as natural deaths by plant owners.

Most young workers are not familiar with the name of plant owners, as most units have only boards with plant numbers.

Ironically, the plants are located around an eight-storeyed building which serves as the office of the Employee Provident Fund Organization but most workers lack both a provident fund and health benefits routed through the Employee State Insurance Corporation.

At 4pm, the sun is still scorching hot, the mills are still whizzing. The kulfi wallah is making a round of the steel mills. Two workers step out to enjoy its sweet relief.

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