International Labor Day - Story of a Worker

May 01, 2019

01 May is International Labor Day and a holiday for our workers. 

While we recognize labor day and all labor standards regarding fair trade, we also recognize the people and individual needs of our workers.

One of our employees—I’ll call him Amir—suffered a family catastrophe earlier this year. His wife was riding a motorcycle when some hooligans came alongside and shoved her off the bike, into the roadway. She suffered severe head injuries that will persist the rest of her life.

Amir and his wife have two children. Their future seemed bright—Amir had just purchased a house in his family village, using his savings and a loan from Mehera Shaw’s employee fund. Now the forecast for their future was cloudy at best. His wife underwent surgery and returned home unable to care for herself, let alone her children. Amir couldn’t leave her to work. A month passed.

Amir is one of 35 Mehera Shaw full-time employees, and someone who had already risen in terms of skills and responsibilities. We certainly didn’t want to lose him, so our leadership team met to figure out what we could do to help him get back to work. As a Fair Trade organization, we believe in providing safe working conditions, a fair salary and benefits. In Amir’s case, we needed to do more.

Mehera Shaw does provide health insurance. As is often the case, it doesn’t cover all the expenses of an injury. We scrambled immediately to help, as best we could, with some of the additional expenses. But the real key would be figuring out how Amir could leave his wife alone during the day and get back to work.

We persuaded him to come into the office and discuss the possibilities. When Amir came into the office that day, we could tell he was thoroughly depressed. The three of us sat him downand called for chai. Our conversation lasted more than two hours.

We offered to rent a studio apartment near our workspace in Jaipur for Amir and his wife, so he could check on her throughout the day. Our proximity to hospitals would be another benefit. Mehera Shaw would pay the bills for three months, to start, in hopes his wife would recover enough by then to return to their village. However, this would require Amir’s parents to care for his children during that time. He didn’t know if they would be willing.

We didn’t come up with a final solution that day but, by the time he left, Amir’s posture and expression had visibly brightened. We had given him some more financial support but, more importantly, we offered him belief that, with our help, he could find solutions. We ultimately were able to make arrangements for a caretaker and Amir is back at work.

Besides helping Amir deal with his troubles, we reviewed Mehera Shaw’s employee insurance coverage to make sure it’s adequate. We also held a training session for all employees to go over their coverage and remind them how to take advantage of it in an emergency.

Mehera Shaw is proud to practice Fair Trade employment practices. We believe our employees are more productive because they know we pay them fairly, care about them and will support them in time of crisis.

Leave a comment

Comments will be approved before showing up.

Name *

Email *

Comment *

---

Also in Journal