Part I: With the nature and value of work in harmony, dignity in work no longer an ignominy. Part I by Tirumalai Kamala on TK Talk
Part II: Dignity is in work, not in the nature of the work. Part II by Tirumalai Kamala on TK Talk
Part III: Dignity is in work, not in the nature of the work. Part III by Tirumalai Kamala on TK Talk
Part IV: Dignity is in work, not in the nature of the work. Part IV by Tirumalai Kamala on TK Talk
Aren't tea plantations the very picture of tranquility? Set in picturesque mountainsides, mist and lush greenery merge to create picture-perfect tourist havens. The dismal reality of Indian tea plantation workers' lives stands in obscene contrast, wage theft the least of the abominations they endure.
With more than an estimated million directly and nearly 6 million indirectly employed across some 150000 tea estates, the Indian tea industry is literally big business in every sense of the phrase. To fully appreciate the scale of egregious labor abuse in the Indian tea industry, we need to start in 1951. India's tea industry is governed by the Plantation Labour Act of 1951. This Act applies to any tea grower with >15 workers or operates a plantation of >5 acres (Page on teaboard.gov.in). On paper the Plantation Labour Act exudes acumen, compassion and foresight. After all it guarantees housing, toilets, water supply, recreational facilities, day care for children below 5 years of age, life insurance, medical insurance, sick leave, and educational facilities for plantation workers' children. In other words, the Act envisioned the Indian tea plantation to be a microcosm of an idealized welfare state. Certainly it's so on paper. Problem is that's where it's stubbornly stayed and there lies the rub because 60 years and counting, many of the provisions of the Act remain unimplemented. For e.g., many plantations built toilets for workers only in 2000-2001. Many plantations still lack electricity supply.
I started this post on a very different tack, intending to highlight the Everest-like scale of Indian tea estate labor abuses uncovered by recent investigative reports by the Columbia Law School's Human Rights Institute and by the BBC.
Thankfully real-life events of a much more empowering kind temporarily but happily derailed me from that dismal prospect. Instead of dwelling on a gloomy tale of deprivation, abuse and chicanery, I can revel in the carpe diem of a few thousand resolute women who stood up to both management and trade unions, unyielding in their demands for a wage hike, bonus and medical facilities, and then it happened, the powers-that-be blinked.
Irony guides us to the appropriate place to start and that's in July 2015. Kanan Devan Hills Plantations (KDHP; Kanan Devan Hills Plantations Company Private Limited) is the largest tea estate in Munnar. A Hill stationin Indian parlance, Munnar is a popular tourist destination in the South Indian state of Kerala. Go ahead, check out Munnar on Wikipedia or Google Images. It hardly seems possible that imagination could improve on Munnar's heaven-on-earth picture-postcard perfection. Yet entirely through the volition of man-made actions, the tea workers' abjectly impoverished lives stand in stark abnegation of this heart-stopping natural beauty.
In July 2015, the Great Place to Work Institute and People Matters, an entity that bills itself as a Human Resources knowledge platform, whatever that means, lauded KDHP as having some of the best management practices in India (Munnar tea agitation is a warning to companies, politicians and... union leaders).
Ironically, early in September 2015, >5000 of KDHP workers went on strike demanding higher wages and bonuses. For 9 days, neither politicians nor labour unions could budge them from their demands. Finally, Oommen Chandy, Kerala's Chief Minister himself stepped into the breach and negotiated management's acceptance of the striking workers' demands for a 20% bonus.
What started the workers' agitation in the first place? KDHP was owned by Tata Tea Limited until 2005 when it divested itself of active tea plantation management across India to focus on its branded tea business though it retains minority stake in many of them (Tata Global Beverages). It used to own 17 tea estates in Munnar with nearly 13000 workers. Sounding excellent on paper, owning 68% of KDHP's shares, the workers were now co-owners, each owning 300 shares each. In actuality, the lofty-sounding co-ownership stamp got the workers nothing but a paltry yearly dividend. In 2014, this amounted to a mere Rs. 300. Then, in a sudden move, citing reduced profits, the company announced it would slash 2015's bonus from 19% down to 10%. The match was lit. The agitation was on.
What made this strike different? Not union leaders but workers themselves, mostly women, stood in solidarity on the frontline, shunning politicians and trade unions alike (Stir against Kanan Devan intensifies in Munnar, VS calls it Tata's 'fraud' company).
For example, sensing electoral opportunity a local politician arrived at the scene, ostensibly to lend his support to the workers' demands. The workers firmly and unhesitatingly shooed him away (Page on thenewsminute.com).
Weren't trade unions set up to safeguard tea plantation workers and negotiate with management on their behalf? After all, these aren't just any trade unions. All India Trade Union Congress, Centre of Indian Trade Unions and Indian National Trade Union Congress, these are storied, well-established unions with all-India presence. Sounds like over time, they'd lost the workers' trust. 'The women alleged that the trade union leaders had colluded with the management of the Kannan Devan Hills Plantations Limited (KDHP) to deny them 20 per cent bonus' (Kerala: 4,000 tea workers protest bonus cut, keep unions out in Munnar).
Let's revisit the irony that started this story because therein lies a necessary eye-opener. Let's also consider other choice words from the word salad incessantly drummed up by PR-marketing brigades to disingenuously embellish modern day corporate products. Ethical, sustainable, certified, and the most gilded lily of them all, CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility). When it comes to tea, especially branded tea, these saccharine-sweet words of lofty idealism slosh about merrily but hollowly in our tea cups. For what kind of CSR is even remotely credible when the very foundation of the tea business, the workers, are treated worse than the tea leaves they harvest? And what value accolades from industry and trade groups when real-life events upend carefully orchestrated corporate narratives to reveal the mean tawdriness that actually lurks below the thread-bare front of such rubber-stamped approvals?
Why is this a rare happy work story? Hitherto disempowered and voiceless, these workers stood together and Goliath slunk away in defeat, at least so far. Cohesion. Over 9 days, the previously disenfranchised stood together. The playbook says different. Usually leaderless agitations rapidly break apart, novice leaders-in-the-making either threatened or bribed to toe the management line, even killed. However it happened, this time that time-tested inevitable didn't come to pass.
Maybe the uncommonly mature and thoughtful role the police chose to play during the 9 days of agitation helped, 'The best help the police did was to ensure that the liquor shops were closed during the agitation,” said Rajan, a leader of the agitating employees. This ensured that there were no untoward incidents during the protest by the woman workers'...and then, even more remarkably, 'When the agitation became intense, the workers closed the roads from the morning to the evening, and the police, sensing the mood, did not resort to using force and instead allowed them to have their say' (Kanan Devan Hills Plantations workers all praise for cops).
Fair wage for a fair day's work. Not wage theft, not impoverished catchphrases like CSR to dress up the rotting carcasses of Potemkin villages that have become so much a part of modern day work life. Dignity in work, not in the nature of the work.
The Sep 2015 all-women Munnar tea estate strike:
A clear, comprehensive summary of its genesis, A Green Blood Women’s Revolution In Munnar By Binu Mathew
A political perspective on the rarity of such a women-led labour movement, The Woman Worker Re-emerges - Lessons from Munnar
A linked post on the sordid reality behind a daily cuppa joe (cup of coffee) here: Tirumalai Kamala's answer to What are some interesting illustrations of the adage "There is no ethical consumption in late capitalism"?.
https://tirumalaikamala.quora.com/Dignity-is-in-work-not-in-the-nature-of-the-work-Part-V
Part II: Dignity is in work, not in the nature of the work. Part II by Tirumalai Kamala on TK Talk
Part III: Dignity is in work, not in the nature of the work. Part III by Tirumalai Kamala on TK Talk
Part IV: Dignity is in work, not in the nature of the work. Part IV by Tirumalai Kamala on TK Talk
Aren't tea plantations the very picture of tranquility? Set in picturesque mountainsides, mist and lush greenery merge to create picture-perfect tourist havens. The dismal reality of Indian tea plantation workers' lives stands in obscene contrast, wage theft the least of the abominations they endure.
With more than an estimated million directly and nearly 6 million indirectly employed across some 150000 tea estates, the Indian tea industry is literally big business in every sense of the phrase. To fully appreciate the scale of egregious labor abuse in the Indian tea industry, we need to start in 1951. India's tea industry is governed by the Plantation Labour Act of 1951. This Act applies to any tea grower with >15 workers or operates a plantation of >5 acres (Page on teaboard.gov.in). On paper the Plantation Labour Act exudes acumen, compassion and foresight. After all it guarantees housing, toilets, water supply, recreational facilities, day care for children below 5 years of age, life insurance, medical insurance, sick leave, and educational facilities for plantation workers' children. In other words, the Act envisioned the Indian tea plantation to be a microcosm of an idealized welfare state. Certainly it's so on paper. Problem is that's where it's stubbornly stayed and there lies the rub because 60 years and counting, many of the provisions of the Act remain unimplemented. For e.g., many plantations built toilets for workers only in 2000-2001. Many plantations still lack electricity supply.
I started this post on a very different tack, intending to highlight the Everest-like scale of Indian tea estate labor abuses uncovered by recent investigative reports by the Columbia Law School's Human Rights Institute and by the BBC.
Thankfully real-life events of a much more empowering kind temporarily but happily derailed me from that dismal prospect. Instead of dwelling on a gloomy tale of deprivation, abuse and chicanery, I can revel in the carpe diem of a few thousand resolute women who stood up to both management and trade unions, unyielding in their demands for a wage hike, bonus and medical facilities, and then it happened, the powers-that-be blinked.
Irony guides us to the appropriate place to start and that's in July 2015. Kanan Devan Hills Plantations (KDHP; Kanan Devan Hills Plantations Company Private Limited) is the largest tea estate in Munnar. A Hill stationin Indian parlance, Munnar is a popular tourist destination in the South Indian state of Kerala. Go ahead, check out Munnar on Wikipedia or Google Images. It hardly seems possible that imagination could improve on Munnar's heaven-on-earth picture-postcard perfection. Yet entirely through the volition of man-made actions, the tea workers' abjectly impoverished lives stand in stark abnegation of this heart-stopping natural beauty.
In July 2015, the Great Place to Work Institute and People Matters, an entity that bills itself as a Human Resources knowledge platform, whatever that means, lauded KDHP as having some of the best management practices in India (Munnar tea agitation is a warning to companies, politicians and... union leaders).
Ironically, early in September 2015, >5000 of KDHP workers went on strike demanding higher wages and bonuses. For 9 days, neither politicians nor labour unions could budge them from their demands. Finally, Oommen Chandy, Kerala's Chief Minister himself stepped into the breach and negotiated management's acceptance of the striking workers' demands for a 20% bonus.
What started the workers' agitation in the first place? KDHP was owned by Tata Tea Limited until 2005 when it divested itself of active tea plantation management across India to focus on its branded tea business though it retains minority stake in many of them (Tata Global Beverages). It used to own 17 tea estates in Munnar with nearly 13000 workers. Sounding excellent on paper, owning 68% of KDHP's shares, the workers were now co-owners, each owning 300 shares each. In actuality, the lofty-sounding co-ownership stamp got the workers nothing but a paltry yearly dividend. In 2014, this amounted to a mere Rs. 300. Then, in a sudden move, citing reduced profits, the company announced it would slash 2015's bonus from 19% down to 10%. The match was lit. The agitation was on.
What made this strike different? Not union leaders but workers themselves, mostly women, stood in solidarity on the frontline, shunning politicians and trade unions alike (Stir against Kanan Devan intensifies in Munnar, VS calls it Tata's 'fraud' company).
For example, sensing electoral opportunity a local politician arrived at the scene, ostensibly to lend his support to the workers' demands. The workers firmly and unhesitatingly shooed him away (Page on thenewsminute.com).
Weren't trade unions set up to safeguard tea plantation workers and negotiate with management on their behalf? After all, these aren't just any trade unions. All India Trade Union Congress, Centre of Indian Trade Unions and Indian National Trade Union Congress, these are storied, well-established unions with all-India presence. Sounds like over time, they'd lost the workers' trust. 'The women alleged that the trade union leaders had colluded with the management of the Kannan Devan Hills Plantations Limited (KDHP) to deny them 20 per cent bonus' (Kerala: 4,000 tea workers protest bonus cut, keep unions out in Munnar).
Let's revisit the irony that started this story because therein lies a necessary eye-opener. Let's also consider other choice words from the word salad incessantly drummed up by PR-marketing brigades to disingenuously embellish modern day corporate products. Ethical, sustainable, certified, and the most gilded lily of them all, CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility). When it comes to tea, especially branded tea, these saccharine-sweet words of lofty idealism slosh about merrily but hollowly in our tea cups. For what kind of CSR is even remotely credible when the very foundation of the tea business, the workers, are treated worse than the tea leaves they harvest? And what value accolades from industry and trade groups when real-life events upend carefully orchestrated corporate narratives to reveal the mean tawdriness that actually lurks below the thread-bare front of such rubber-stamped approvals?
Why is this a rare happy work story? Hitherto disempowered and voiceless, these workers stood together and Goliath slunk away in defeat, at least so far. Cohesion. Over 9 days, the previously disenfranchised stood together. The playbook says different. Usually leaderless agitations rapidly break apart, novice leaders-in-the-making either threatened or bribed to toe the management line, even killed. However it happened, this time that time-tested inevitable didn't come to pass.
Maybe the uncommonly mature and thoughtful role the police chose to play during the 9 days of agitation helped, 'The best help the police did was to ensure that the liquor shops were closed during the agitation,” said Rajan, a leader of the agitating employees. This ensured that there were no untoward incidents during the protest by the woman workers'...and then, even more remarkably, 'When the agitation became intense, the workers closed the roads from the morning to the evening, and the police, sensing the mood, did not resort to using force and instead allowed them to have their say' (Kanan Devan Hills Plantations workers all praise for cops).
Fair wage for a fair day's work. Not wage theft, not impoverished catchphrases like CSR to dress up the rotting carcasses of Potemkin villages that have become so much a part of modern day work life. Dignity in work, not in the nature of the work.
The Sep 2015 all-women Munnar tea estate strike:
A clear, comprehensive summary of its genesis, A Green Blood Women’s Revolution In Munnar By Binu Mathew
A political perspective on the rarity of such a women-led labour movement, The Woman Worker Re-emerges - Lessons from Munnar
A linked post on the sordid reality behind a daily cuppa joe (cup of coffee) here: Tirumalai Kamala's answer to What are some interesting illustrations of the adage "There is no ethical consumption in late capitalism"?.
https://tirumalaikamala.quora.com/Dignity-is-in-work-not-in-the-nature-of-the-work-Part-V
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