New York Manhole Covers, Forged Barefoot in India

[Guest guest]

Read the last sentence, that is how things go here even in the best of companies some times.!!!Karthik.New York Manhole Covers, Forged Barefoot in India

J. Adam Huggins for The New York Times

Workers in Haora, India, have few protections while making manhole covers for Con Edison and some cities' utilities

By

HEATHER TIMMONS and J. ADAM HUGGINS

Published: November 26, 2007

NEW DELHI — Eight thousand miles from

Manhattan, barefoot, shirtless, whip-thin men rippled with muscle were

forging prosaic pieces of the urban jigsaw puzzle: manhole covers.

Skip to next paragraph

Multimedia

Enlarge This Image

J. Adam Huggins for The New York Times

A foundry worker cooling off. Con Edison said it is revising contracts with safety in mind.

Enlarge This Image

J. Adam Huggins for The New York Times

As metal pours into ladles, sparks fly, sometimes igniting workers'

clothing, at Shakti Industries in Haora. Plant officials say accidents

do not occur.

The New York Times

The Shakti Industries foundry is in West Bengal State.

Seemingly impervious to the

heat from the metal, the workers at one of West Bengal's many foundries

relied on strength and bare hands rather than machinery. Safety

precautions were barely in evidence; just a few pairs of eye goggles

were seen in use on a recent visit. The foundry, Shakti Industries in

Haora, produces manhole covers for Con Edison and New York City's

Department of Environmental Protection, as well as for departments in

New Orleans and Syracuse.The scene was as spectacular as it was

anachronistic: flames, sweat and liquid iron mixing in the smoke like

something from the Middle Ages. That's what attracted the interest of a

photographer who often works for The New York Times — images that

practically radiate heat and illustrate where New York's manhole covers

are born.When officials at Con Edison — which buys a quarter of its manhole covers, roughly 2,750 a year, from

India — were shown the pictures by the photographer, they said they were surprised."We

were disturbed by the photos," said S. Clendenin, director of

media relations with Con Edison. "We take worker safety very

seriously," he said.Now, the utility said, it is rewriting

international contracts to include safety requirements. Contracts will

now require overseas manufacturers to "take appropriate actions to

provide a safe and healthy workplace," and to follow local and federal

guidelines in India, Mr. Clendenin said. At Shakti, street

grates, manhole covers and other castings were scattered across the

dusty yard. Inside, men wearing sandals and shorts carried coke and

iron ore piled high in baskets on their heads up stairs to the furnace

feeding room. On the ground floor, other men, often shoeless

and stripped to the waist, waited with giant ladles, ready to catch the

molten metal that came pouring out of the furnace. A few women were

working, but most of the heavy lifting appeared to be left to the men.The

temperature outside the factory yard was more than 100 degrees on a

September visit. Several feet from where the metal was being poured,

the area felt like an oven, and the workers were slick with sweat. Often,

sparks flew from pots of the molten metal. In one instance they ignited

a worker's lungi, a skirtlike cloth wrap that is common men's wear in

India. He quickly, reflexively, doused the flames by rubbing the

burning part of the cloth against the rest of it with his hand, then

continued to cart the metal to a nearby mold. Once the metal

solidified and cooled, workers removed the manhole cover casting from

the mold and then, in the last step in the production process, ground

and polished the rough edges. Finally, the men stacked the covers and

bolted them together for shipping. "We can't maintain the

luxury of Europe and the United States, with all the boots and all

that," said Sunil Modi, director of Shakti Industries. He said,

however, that the foundry never had accidents. He was concerned about

the attention, afraid that contracts would be pulled and jobs lost.New

York City's Department of Environmental Protection gets most of its

sewer manhole covers from India. When asked in an e-mail message about

the department's source of covers, Mark Daly, director of

communications for the Department of Citywide Administrative Services,

said that state law requires the city to buy the lowest-priced products

available that fit its specifications. Mr. Daly said the law forbids the city from excluding companies based on where a product is manufactured. Municipalities

and utility companies often buy their manhole covers through middlemen

who contract with foreign foundries; New York City buys the sewer

covers through a company in Flushing, Queens.Con Edison said it

did not plan to cancel any of its contracts with Shakti after seeing

the photographs, though it has been phasing out Indian-made manhole

covers for several years because of changes in design specifications. Manhole

covers manufactured in India can be anywhere from 20 to 60 percent

cheaper than those made in the United States, said Alfred Spada, the

editor and publisher of Modern Casting magazine and the spokesman for

the American Foundry Society. Workers at foundries in India are paid

the equivalent of a few dollars a day, while foundry workers in the

United States earn about $25 an hour. The men making New York

City's manhole covers seemed proud of their work and pleased to be

photographed doing it. The production manager at the Shakti Industries

factory, A. Ahmed, was enthusiastic about the photographer's visit, and

gave a full tour of the facilities, stopping to measure the temperature

of the molten metal — some 1,400 degrees Centigrade, or more than 2,500

degrees Fahrenheit. India's 1948 Factory Safety Act addresses

cleanliness, ventilation, waste treatment, overtime pay and fresh

drinking water, but the only protective gear it specifies is safety

goggles. Mr. Modi said that his factory followed basic safety

regulations and that workers should not be barefoot. "It must have been

a very hot day" when the photos were taken, he said.Some labor

activists in India say that injuries are far higher than figures show.

"Many accidents are not being reported," said H. Mahadevan, the deputy

general secretary for the All-India Trade Union Congress. Safety, overall, is "not taken as a serious concern by employers or trade unions," Mr. Mahadevan added. A.

K. Anand, the director of the Institute of Indian Foundrymen in New

Delhi, a trade association, said in a phone interview that foundry

workers were "not supposed to be working barefoot," but he could not

answer questions about what safety equipment they should be wearing.At the Shakti Industries foundry, "there are no accidents, never ever. Period," Mr. Modi said. "By God's will, it's all fine."

Timmons reported from New Delhi and J. Adam Huggins from Haora, India.Karthik.