Diamond Workers' Union Gujarat asks GJEPC for a wage survey
A letter dated 24 September asks the council and the Commerce Ministry to survey piece rates across Gujarat. Two Gujarati reports add a union count of about 100 cutter suicides in two years; the earliest English report carries none.
The union wrote to the council. Diamond Workers' Union Gujarat asked GJEPC on 24 September to survey piece rates across Gujarat and lift them. Two Gujarati reports put its suicide count at about 100 in two years.
If you buy polished from Gujarat: The demand is a piece-rate rise, not a strike. Three towns have already struck this year and settled without the rate question closing.
If you sit on a trade council: The letter asks for a wage survey run jointly with the Commerce Ministry. It is addressed to the council's chairman by office.
What this is not: An audited figure. The suicide count is the union's own, carried by two Gujarati reports of 25 September, and absent from the earliest English report.
| Report | Published | Bytes | Suicide count | First strike town |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Blunt Times (English) | 24 Sep 2026 | 150,426 | not carried | Mahuva |
| Sandesh (Gujarati) | 25 Sep 2026 | 32,820 | about 100 | Gadhda |
| Trishul News (Gujarati) | 25 Sep 2026 | 292,492 | about 100 | Gadhda |
IThe letter asks for a survey
Dated 24 September. The union wrote to GJEPC's chairman asking for a Gujarat-wide survey of cutters' wages and a rise in piece rates. It addresses the Commerce Ministry alongside the council.
Rates never restored. The union says factory owners cut piece rates through the downturn and have not lifted them as demand returned. Its representation reads: “The wages of these artisans, which had hit rock bottom, must be increased.”
IIFour districts named
Below minimum wage. Bhavnagar, Amreli, Rajkot and Junagadh are the 4 Saurashtra centres the union names as paying under the legal minimum. It gives no rate for any of them.
Three towns struck. Talaja and Palitana are among the 3 towns all three reports name as places cutters struck over rates. The third is given as Mahuva in one report and Gadhda in two.
IIIThe count is the union's own
About 100, hedged. Sandesh and Trishul News both carry the union's statement that about 100 cutters took their own lives in two years. Neither ties the figure to any audit.
Absent in English. The Blunt Times report of 24 September, the earliest found, carries no suicide figure. A search of its saved page returned none.
01What would change this call+
A published wage survey, or a settled rate schedule. The union's case rests on rates cut during the downturn and not lifted since, which is an assertion in all three reports rather than a measured series. A survey by the council or the ministry, or an agreed piece-rate schedule in any named district, would replace it with a number.
02What a piece rate is, and why it does not track the export figure+
A diamond cutter in Gujarat is generally not paid a wage for a shift. The pay is a piece rate: a sum per stone or per lot, set by the factory, varying with size, shape and the difficulty of the work. That structure is why a recovery in export value does not automatically reach the bench. The rate is a price the factory sets and can leave unchanged; when order books thinned through the downturn, rates were cut, and nothing in the mechanism lifts them again when volume returns. It is also why volume and pay can move in opposite directions. A factory processing more small stones at a lower rate per stone can be busier than last year while paying less for the same hours, and the export line will record more carats leaving the country. The union's argument is precisely this gap, and the figures it argues from are the council's own. What a piece rate is not is a published number: no rate card appears in any of the three reports, which is why the demand is for a survey.
03Method · the desk’s arithmetic+
Three pages were fetched direct with a browser user agent on 27 September 2026 and saved before anything was written. The Blunt Times, 200 and 150,426 bytes, carrying datePublished 2026-09-24T08:29:07+00:00 in its own schema.org markup, which independently confirms the 24 September timestamp the Bureau's slate had passed up but could not re-verify after its own request to that host timed out. Sandesh, 200 and 32,820 bytes, datePublished 2026-09-25T10:20:10+05:30. Trishul News, 200 and 292,492 bytes, datePublished 2026-09-25T06:43:36+00:00. The letter's date is The Blunt Times' own: its text reads 'In a letter dated September 24'. The quoted thirteen words are that same report's rendering of the union's representation, and it is the only quotation in this article. The suicide count is not taken from the English report, which does not contain it: a case-insensitive grep of the saved Blunt Times page for 'suicide' returns 0 hits. It is taken from the two Gujarati pages, each of which carries the union's own sentence; Sandesh's reads, in Gujarati, that in two years about 100 gem-cutters have died by suicide, and greps of the saved Sandesh page return 4 hits for the phrase for 'about 100' and 6 for the word for suicide. The count is attributed to the union in every register it appears in here and is nowhere stated as fact. The strike-town divergence was established by grep rather than by reading one source's list: 'Mahuva' returns 1 hit in the saved Blunt Times page and 0 in either Gujarati page, while the Gujarati spelling of Gadhda returns 2 hits in Sandesh and 1 in Trishul and 0 in Blunt Times. Named union officers appear only in the Gujarati reports, as its president and vice-president; their names are not printed here because the two transliterations available do not agree and no source was reached that settles the spelling. No comment from GJEPC or the Commerce Ministry appears in any of the three pages, and none was sought. Archive check against content/articles.json, one term per grep, every hit opened: 'Diamond Worker Union' 0, 'DWUG' 0, 'gem-cutters' 0, 'piece rate' 0, 'Saurashtra' 0, 'Palitana' 0. New to this paper.
India's polished carat fetches $671.39, its grown carat $66.51
The council's own export figures for the goods these cutters make, read from the primary.
The trade, filed before the New York open.
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