Automotive manufacturing: a poor safety record

Addressing a Rozgar Mela on 28 August, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said India’s automobile manufacturing sector is on a path to growth and will require youth power to propel it.

“There will be immense employment opportunities,” the Prime Minister asserted.

The government now aims to increase the contribution of the automobile sector to India’s GDP to 12 per cent from the present 7.1 per cent and generate about 50 million jobs.

But even as India strives to be a manufacturing hub, thousands of workers continue to be injured and disabled in India’s fast-growing automotive sector supply chain every year.

In fact, the continued high number of reported injuries among workers employed by firms that produce and supply spare parts for India’s leading car manufacturers, shows the automobile sector’s growth has come at a bloody cost. And young people are being badly hit.

Around 65 per cent of the workers being injured in the automotive manufacturing industry are under the age of 30. The automobile manufacturing sector in India recorded 3,882 incidents of injuries including 1,050 deaths in 2020, according to data from the Directorate General Factory Advice Service and Labour Institutes (DGFASLI).

For instance, 26-year-old Mahesh, a native of Banda in Uttar Pradesh, lost eight fingers after he was forced by his supervisor to work on a power press machine typically used in making automotive parts at a private company in the IMT Manesar area of Gurgaon in Haryana. Although Mahesh was hired as a helper at an auto spare parts manufacturing company, his supervisor forced him to work on the machine. “I am not educated and had no training in how to operate the machine,” he said. “But the supervisor said that there was a shortage of operators and threatened to fire me if I refused to work.”

Within minutes of operating the power press on 8 September 2022, Mahesh lost four fingers from each of his hands. Apparently, he started working on the machine after the supervisor gave him a demonstration.

Untrained power press operators

In the automotive manufacturing sector, it is not uncommon to hear stories about lowly educated helpers like Mahesh regularly being asked to operate dangerous machines like power presses without adequate training. According to reports, only two per cent of the industry’s power press operators have received formal training at an institute, and most were simply taught how to operate the machines by their supervisors or senior workers. This is a regular phenomenon despite the Automotive Skills Development Council (ASDC) stipulating that press shop operators must have achieved a minimum education level of 8th standard. Although operating a power press is a skilled job, most helpers called upon to operate the machinery hardly ever meet the required educational and training criteria.

In its latest report examining the written occupational safety and health (OSH) policies of India’s top 10 ‘original equipment manufacturers’ (OEMs – i.e. the biggest automotive brands), the Safe in India Foundation (SII) says there are a number of measures these leading brands can take to prevent serious and debilitating injuries to workers employed at factories in their parts supply chain. These include regular safety audits of the suppliers by the big brands themselves and setting and specifying standard operating procedures the supply chain factories must follow – for example, for the safe operation of power presses.  

However, the SII Foundation’s report, SafetyNiti 2023, found that 80 per cent of a group of 30 Tier 2 OEM suppliers in Haryana state who were recently audited by brands including Maruti, Honda and Hero, failed their safety audit.

“Since 2021, we have been studying the published OSH policies of the top 10 auto sector companies in India, to assess if they ensure safe working conditions for the workers and prevent them from, at the least, losing their fingers (not counting the more serious accidents and injuries that we have not begun to track) through the supply chain,” said Sandeep Sachdeva, co-founder and CEO of the SII Foundation.

The 2023 report states that while six of the 10 OEMs have a supplier code of conduct for OSH available in the public domain (an improvement from four in the 2022 report), only four of the six are contractually binding on the suppliers. Where a contractually-binding supplier code of conduct exists, the OEMs expect the suppliers to disseminate it down the deeper supply chain (known as Tier 2, 3 and 4 suppliers), but there are no provisions in the codes to ensure that monitoring takes place to ensure this happens.    

In addition, none of the 10 OEMs appears to have a standard operating plan (SOP) or comprehensive OSH implementation plan for their deeper supply chain (i.e. Tier 2, 3 and 4 suppliers), the same as in 2022. Worryingly, in 2023, only two OEMs reported that they are monitoring the actions their Tier 1 (i.e. direct) suppliers are taking to improve safety further down the supply chain, among Tier 2-4 suppliers who provide parts to Tier 1 suppliers.

“While seven of the top 10 have now declared their [main] OSH policies in the public domain covering much ground since our last report [in 2022]; over 1,000 workers have lost their fingers in this sector in the interim too,” added Sachdeva. “So, clearly, the need is for stronger measures like the management/boards discussing safety audits, accidents and injuries, more frequently, and defining concrete actions to improve safety down the line.”

Contracted workers ‘lack safety protections’

Although there are laws covering health and safety in large factories, many plants are staffed by contractual workers who are not protected under these laws.

Indeed, the SII report found that just four of the 10 OEMs say they have OSH policies for contract workers that are on a par with those for their permanent workers, a figure unchanged since 2022. In addition, only four OEMs have a human rights policy in the public domain that categorically includes non-permanent workers and/or their deeper supply chain in its scope (an improvement from zero in 2022 and 2021). However, two others that do not have a formal human rights policy in the public domain have mentioned non-permanent workers and/or their deeper supply chain in other documents, such as their supplier code of conduct.

In addition, only one OEM has a grievance redressal mechanism for workers (including non-permanent workers) across the supply chain to report unsafe working conditions, another expects its suppliers to have a similar mechanism for their workers, while eight have it for only their own factory workers.

‘Slow but steady improvement’

The SII Foundation states: “There has been a slow but steady improvement in [automotive] brands’ occupational safety and health policies since Safety Niti 2021, with Bajaj and Honda having most improved on several parameters, while TVS and Ashok Leyland continue to be at the bottom. 

“But a lot is still needed to be improved in the policies and their implementation in the deeper supply chain.”

It adds: “Compared to SafetyNiti 2022, Bajaj has significantly improved their policies to become the best among the 10 while Maruti-Suzuki has fallen behind. TVS and Ashok Leyland still do not seem to have addressed many of these [OSH) areas.” 

The report found that nine OEMs have now started to report in their public documents (or have advised SII) on at least some actions they have taken to prevent accidents in their deeper supply chain, such as details of risk assessments and monitoring and audits of suppliers.

However, the SII Foundation report warns that: “It’s not clear whether despite reporting of the evidence of injuries since 2019 [by SII Foundation], this issue [of injuries to automotive supply chain workers] and actions taken by OEMs are being discussed at OEM boards.”

The SafetyNiti 2023 report adds: “Although SII has been recommending inclusion of OSH and the actions taken in OEMs’ standard board agenda, there is evidence in only two having done this: Maruti-Suzuki, whose chairman wrote constructively to SII acknowledging its seriousness and promising actions, and Hyundai now has ‘a Road to Sustainability report’, where the chairman’s message talks about ‘strengthening human rights management; improved the safety and health and ESG-oriented management of their supply chains’.”

“Thousands of workers continue to be injured in India’s fast-growing auto-sector supply chain every year,” the report states. “Most of these are migrants and in contractual employment. This issue of worker safety and preventable worker injuries in the deeper supply chains of India’s automobile industry is a national issue that deserves urgent attention, not only because of the devastating economic and psychological impact it has on the injured workers and their families, but also on the industry’s domestic and global reputation of professionalism and responsible behaviour, and the labour productivity.

“In addition to the immense cost to the workers and their families, to the society, and to the nation at large, these accidents also cost the businesses time, materials, reduced production, direct and indirect (including bribes) payments for covering the incidents, including medical expenses, repair and replacement of damaged machinery and equipment and negative impact on the morale of all workers.”

The SII foundation adds that since 2016, it has located (and assisted with healthcare and compensation) over 5,500 injured workers in Haryana and Maharashtra, of which around 80 per cent were injured in automotive component factories. In the financial year 2022-23, SII says it identified over 1,500 severely injured manufacturing workers, including automotive workers, across many states in India.

‘Brands must assume responsibility for OSH within the supply chain’

“As the primary beneficiaries of these supply chains and indeed as holders of most power, profits and technical expertise, SII believes the auto sector brands must take up the responsibility to improve this situation. This is also now acknowledged globally and mandated through a variety of human rights and business responsibility frameworks, that they need to adhere to.

“This issue, therefore, needs joint and several actions by the top 10 OEMs, who use around 80 per cent of this supply chain. Apart from helping build a safe environment, these OEMs will also benefit from better productivity and other tactical and strategic gains.”

Further action required by automotive brands

The SII Foundation is therefore calling on all OEMs to take further action to improve both their overall OSH policies and the OSH performance of their own factories and those in their supply chain.

Among other things, it recommends that OEMs demand a minimum level of OSH compliance from their supply chains (for example, by demanding that supply chain companies ensure all workers are covered by the employees’ state insurance social security scheme); create, publish and implement a supplier code of conduct and a standard operating procedure for the deeper supply chain; and ensure all contract workers in their own factories are covered by their OSH policy framework.

The SII Foundation is also calling for the boards of OEMs to take responsibility for worker safety in their deeper supply chain; for OEMs to improve the transparency and accountability of accident reporting in the supply chain, including weeding out habitual OSH offenders in the supply chain and rewarding the safest factories commercially; and for OEMs to initiate ground-level actions on OSH, such as “honest” worker safety audits and worker training.

SII also recommends that the industry’s trade associations, the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) and the Automotive Component Manufacturers Association (ACMA), work with the OEMs to create a joint industry-level OSH taskforce; establish industry standards for safety in the automotive sector; and support SIAM and ACMA members in complying with the National Guidelines on Responsible Business Conduct.

It also calls for the central and state governments to use data from the Employees State Insurance Scheme to select factories for inspections and conduct safety surveys and studies of factories, especially in the automotive sector; and to create a reliable accident/injury reporting and governance system, and use the reports and results for continuous OSH improvements, including the strengthening of factory inspections and effective penalties for repeat offenders. It is also calling for the government to set up a confidential helpline for workers to report unsafe conditions and accidents in all types of factories, including automotive plants.

“Most of the safety costs are externalised to smaller units who do not have the capital and do not have the margins to set up an adequate safety infrastructure. The accountability of the principal employers or business owners [OEMs] is extremely important,” said Divya Varma, director of the Centre for Labour, Aajeevika Bureau, a non-profit organisation that seeks to provide solutions, services and security to millions of India's rural migrant workers. 

Commenting on the SafetyNiti 2023 report and the role big automotive brands can play in ensuring good safety standards in their supply chain factories, Dr Dev Nathan, a professor at India’s Institute for Human Development, said: “Supply chains are contracted by brands like garment brands. They are not like we buy something from a shop. They [the auto sector brands] are therefore responsible [for this].”

The Safety Niti 2023 report can be found at:

safeinindia.org