India Friends Association is organizing the US tour of Dr. Baba Adhav, a highly respected champion of workers rights based in Pune, India.

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Baba Adhav will be speaking in the Los Angeles are on the 27th of September and would be in the US till the end of October. We want to give maximum exposure to this work which is likely to be the basis of some type of social security legislation in India. If you and your group would like to host him during this time, please send a mail to: billababu@aol.com.

A brief intro:

Nominated as the 2008 Man of the Year, by the Week magazine, veteran trade union leader Baba Adhav has spent a lifetime advocating the rights of porters, construction workers and others in the unorganized sector. Currently as the working president of the National Campaign Committee on Unorganised Labour, he is pressing for the passage of the Unorganised Sector Workers Social Security Bill that was introduced in the Rajya Sabha in September 2007.

Baba Adhav became involved with the issues of hamals and mathadis (headloaders) in Pune's markets in the early-50s, as a young, practising doctor. Born and brought up in Pune's old Peth area, Baba grew up watching the daily toil in the timber, grain and metal markets.

Baba's Hamal Panchayat, a trade union movement launched in 1955, struck work for the first time over the issue of denial of wage hikes by jaggery merchants to hamals on 19th Nov 1956. The four-day strike was a success, and the porters realised the power of the trade union. In 1962, the panchayat sought a law to protect the rights of the unorganised porters. It was a long struggle before the Maharashtra Mathadi, Hamal and other Manual Workers (Regulation of Employment and Welfare) Act was passed in 1969.

However it took a sustained rights-based struggle for dignity and against exploitation to counter the labour department and trader lobbies. It was only after the Supreme Court's order in 1980 did the 300,000 hamals in Maharashtra benefit from the Act.

The Hamal Panchayat is also an active partner of the Mahatma Phule Samta Pratishtan, which serves as an organising centre for workers of Pune's large service industry, including rickshaw and tempo drivers, ragpickers and waste recyclers, handicapped people and farmers. These unions meet frequently, sharing the best strategies for breaking the shackles of exploitation.

He has also served as a councillor in the Pune Municipal Corporation for ten years.