New Delhi: Every year, thousands of workers in India’s automotive supply chain suffer crush injuries – most caused by severe compression on parts of the body, costing fingers, hands, and at times, entire livelihoods – after operating faulty machinery without adequate training or protection. Every year, several of these workers discover that their Employees’ State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) cards were not issued before the accident, cutting them off from the medical care and financial compensation they are entitled to. And every year, despite repeatedly flagging these failures to factory supervisors, automotive manufacturers and government bodies, the system continues largely unchanged. Safe in India (SII) Foundation’s eighth annual report, CRUSHED 2026, documents this persisting issue: recording worker testimonies, brand and state-level analysis and on-ground implementation of governmental occupational safety and health (OSH) provisions. In 2025 alone, SII assisted 2,514 injured workers, the highest single-year figure in the nine years it has been active. Since 2016, SII’s Worker Assistance Centres (WACs) across Haryana and Maharashtra have advocated for over 11,000 injured workers, of whom more than 9,000 were from the automotive sector. A majority of the affected workers are migrants, young, non-unionised and in contractual employment without livelihood security, the report says. Persistent concerns“When I arrived on my first day, my boss told me to work and so I worked. They did not train me at all,” Jayashree Phad, an injured worker, told SII.Her account reflects the broader sentiments of thousands of workers. One of the most commonly reported injuries occurs when a machine strikes twice while a worker is placing a metal part into a power press. The “double stroke” stems from easily-mendable, defective components like loose pins, broken paddles or damaged springs. It accounts for 76% of all crush injuries recorded by SII since 2016, with the average loss being two fingers per accident, a figure that has not shifted in seven years. Photo: CRUSHED 2026, Safe In India Foundation.According to the report, nearly 95% of power press injuries took place on machines with no functioning safety sensor. This figure has steadily oscillated between 91% and 99% since 2019, with no discernible improvement. In 76% of cases, machine inspection occurred only after an accident or ahead of a scheduled audit, rather than as the routine exercise the law mandates. Moreover, 84% of workers who flagged machine faults before accidents were ignored. Photo: CRUSHED 2026, Safe In India Foundation.Sintu Kumar, a worker from Bihar, told SII, “I was working in the night shift. I had already reported the faulty machine button, but it was ignored. Then, at 12:10 AM, the button accidentally triggered, and my left index finger was cut off.”There is more to it. Ramsingh, a factory worker, told SII that workers are frequently put on machines they are not qualified to operate. After an accident, the management’s often replies, “Accident ho gaya to ho gaya, koi dusra mil jayega” (If an accident occurred so be it, we’ll easily find someone else). This disregard also extends to basic safety provisions. Workers told SII that factories deliberately avoid putting sensors on machines, since stopping due to proximity alerts reduces productivity. V.N. Saroja, the head of worker safety at SII, told The Wire that workers in focus groups report a similar pattern. “When they report a fault, they are not heard,” she says, attributing this to the profiles of workers who are young, undereducated, migrants and, most crucially, on contract. “Being contract labour leaves them with little agency: no direct relationship with the factory and no standing to ask for training or to refuse unsafe work,” she adds.The report also notes a direct correlation between ESIC compliance and injury severity. ESIC is a government-run social security scheme that provides workers with access to healthcare and disability compensation. Workers are supposed to receive their e-Pehchan cards – official health cards are issued under the ESIC scheme – on the first day. Those who received the cards only after an accident lost more fingers on average than those who got them beforehand, the report notes. It argues that employers who allow administrative non-compliance tend to also foster unsafe work environments, leading to a high number of accidents. Sandeep Sachdeva, CEO of SII, agrees with this assessment. “This is the root cause of both the denial of e-Pehchan cards and the lack of safety mechanisms in machines,” he told The Wire.In 2025, only 5% of workers surveyed received appointment letters, which are mandatory for all workers, and 43% did not receive salary slips at the time of payment. Additionally, 92% reported errors in slips that were issued, often massively understating overtime hours. Injured workers disproportionately belong to disadvantaged groupsThe demographic profile of injured workers has remained largely consistent across eight years of SII’s advocacy. Most are non-permanent, contractual employees. In Haryana, approximately 59% of injured workers are engaged through external contractors; in Maharashtra, nearly 81%. When employer-employee relationships remain legally ambiguous due to third-party involvement, access to social and legal protections becomes immensely difficult. Roughly 85% of injured workers assisted by SII in Haryana are inter-state migrants, mostly from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. In Maharashtra, 63% are migrants, a considerable proportion of whom are intra-state migrants from the Marathwada region. Almost none of these workers are part of any labour union. Photo: CRUSHED 2026, Safe In India Foundation.About 67% workers in both states have received very little formal education, most having studied only up to Class 10 or below. Around one-fifth of the workers have no formal education. Automotive Skills Development Council (ASDC) guidelines explicitly require machine operators to have a minimum of Class 5 education with four years of relevant experience or Class 8 with one year of experience, rules that are routinely ignored. The report finds a negative correlation between educational qualifications and severity of injury.There is also a direct relation between wages and severity of crush injuries. Workers earning less than Rs 8,000 per month lose an average of 2.25 fingers per accident, whereas those earning above Rs 20,000 lose an average of 1.97. The report suggests the practice of assigning lower-paid helpers as machine operators without proper training or salary incrementation plays a role in this regard. “Factory owners will do anything to get their work done. If a machine operator is on leave, they will make a helper earning Rs 450 work on the machine, without any training,” one worker told SII.Women workers face increasingly disproportionate odds. Many are compelled to work with hazardous and malfunctioning machines as sole income providers with limited employment opportunities, while receiving lower wages than male counterparts for the same work and experience. Scope for career progression is also severely limited for them. ‘High-frequency factories’A factory in Faridabad recorded 76 serious injuries between 2018 and 2025, according to SII data. No preventive action has been taken, despite details being repeatedly shared with government stakeholders and the automobile brand the facility primarily supplies to. In Haryana, at least 34 factories have recorded over 15 injuries. In Maharashtra, at least six factories have recorded more than 10 since 2022. The worst-performing factory in the state noted 15 serious injuries in 2025 alone. Additionally, 98% of all injured workers assisted by SII in the two states come from the supply chains of six brands: Maruti Suzuki (30.6% of injured workers since 2022), Mahindra (16.5%), Honda (15.7%), Tata Motors (15.7%), Hero (14.8%) and Bajaj (4.7%). Furthermore, 41% of factories with 12 or more documented injuries are part of the Automotive Component Manufacturers Association of India (ACMA), whose members supply tier one and tier two components to several major automobile brands and are evidently well-off. The Wire has reached out to the above mentioned automobile brands for comments. This report will be updated if they respond.A more meaningful trend can be noticed in Haryana, where SII has been working since 2019. Injuries linked to Haryana-based brands have fallen over the past three years and Bajaj currently ranks highest on SII’s SafetyNiti index, which assesses safety mechanisms and policies. Maruti has also displayed a downward trend, while Hero and Honda have flat-lined since 2022. “All ten brands have improved their safety policies since we started publishing SafetyNiti reports in 2022,” Sachdeva notes, “but implementation is lagging.”Quarterly-trend graphs of supply chain accidents reveal a seasonal pattern, with peaks coinciding with periods of high production pressure. The report argues that this seasonality warrants “targeted audits and inspections during high-risk periods” and could enable more pro-active, data-driven government interventions. Yet, even after eight years of consistently publishing data, not a single brand has built a pre-emptive audit programme.“The deeper supply chain is not seen as brands’ responsibility. This is erroneous and unfortunate,” says Sachdeva, “A brand sees its own plants and its biggest direct suppliers; below that, where most injuries happen, there’s a blind spot for regulators, markets and investors alike. Even Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting (BRSR), a real step forward, reports on only a brand’s operations and its largest direct suppliers and even that supplier disclosure is voluntary. With little pressure and no system, those factories often aren’t even mapped, let alone audited.”Gaps in safety regulations implementationCRUSHED 2026 identifies multiple gaps in implementation of provisions targeting worker conditions. Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions (Central) Rules cap weekly working hours at 48, yet in 2025, 72% of injured workers worked more than 60 hours a week, without the legally required double-rate overtime pay. Of the workers who reported an audit in the past year, 88% said workers were not permitted to be present and 82% noted that auditors did not speak with any workers. Furthermore, 56% were not even formally informed of an audit and realised it only after machines were suddenly being cleaned. Photo: CRUSHED 2026, Safe In India Foundation.SII’s survey across Haryana, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu found that none of workers in Haryana and Maharashtra reported a government inspection involving interaction with workers. By contrast, 89% in Karnataka reported original equipment manufacturer (OEM) or buyer inspections, evidencing that worker-inclusive practices are not unfeasible, merely missing in states where injuries are most severe. Twenty times the official numberThe most glaring gap is in the official data. In 2023, the Directorate General Factory Advice Service and Labour Institutes (DGFASLI) observed a total of 40 injuries for entire Haryana. SII alone assisted more than 1,500 workers in three Haryana cities that year. Real numbers are estimated to be around 20 times what is officially acknowledged.Saroja says the inspection system has shifted towards “facilitation,” wherein visits mostly happen after accidents, factories are notified well in advance and inspectors rely on what the management chooses to show them. “Government inspectors are essentially not reaching these factories and when they do, they don’t talk to the workers,” she adds. The report recommends using ESIC Permanent Disablement Benefit data as a more accurate alternative for targeting high-risk factories. What can be doneEven as the technology and legislation to prevent crush injuries exist, factories blatantly prioritise profits over worker well-being.To improve this deplorable reality, the report urges automobile brands to take greater responsibility over supply chain safety and to publish contractually binding supplier codes of conduct, encompassing non-permanent workers and setting up grievance redressal mechanisms. “Grievance redressal mechanisms stop at their own factory gates,” Sachdeva notes, “For workers who are not part of a union, there is no other channel. Without either a brand mechanism or a state one that genuinely reaches them, an injured worker is left with nowhere to turn.”Drawing a parallel with the garment sector, where over 200 brands signed a safety accord after the Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh, inspecting 2,000 factories, Sachdeva says the auto sector can do its own version proactively and “just needs one brand to lead.”The report also recommends the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers and the Automotive Component Manufacturers Association to form a joint safety task force and develop a comprehensive training certification, particularly for power press operators. It urges central and state labour ministries to integrate ESIC data into planning, requiring employers to be held liable for failing to register workers before accidents occur. “Safer factories mean stable skills, reliable uptime and predictable quality,” says Sachdeva, “Professionalism, better working conditions and productivity are one chain, not a trade-off.”