Women workers pose questions to managements, trade unions, political parties--and men.
The nine-day strike earlier this month by more than 5,000 women workers of the Kanan Devan Hills Plantations (KDHP) company in Kerala’s Munnar tea gardens has sent reverberations through the trade union movement of the state and unsettled the plantation sector as well.
The demands of the workers were straightforward—a small hike in the annual bonus from 19% of annual wages last year to 20% this year (as against the KDHP management’s decision to reduce the bonus to 10% citing poor market conditions) and a doubling of daily wages to Rs 500 from the currently meagre Rs 175–Rs 250. The basic daily wage of the women workers who carry out the crucial tea-picking operations is Rs 83, which with allowances can add up to around Rs 250 for 10 hours of work a day. The women are expected to pluck 20 kg of tea leaves during their working day. In actual practice they work up to 12 hours and pluck (and transport on their backs) up to 60–70 kg in order to increase their pittance of earnings. This back-breaking work for long hours inevitably has an impact on the health of the workers.
KDHP has an unusual ownership–management structure. More than a decade ago, the plantations were hived off to a separate company in which the majority stake is held by the workers. The workers, however, have little say in management. Legally speaking, the striking workers may have been agitating against their own company, but in actual fact they were not. The unions themselves—the All-India Trade Union Congress, Indian National Trade Union Congress and the Confederation of Indian Trade Unions (in order of importance in KDHP)—which are all active in the area stand accused of being co-opted by the management. Besides, the trade unions are male-dominated and have had little time for the women workers. The women workers of KDHP took matters into their hands—kept the male workers (including husbands who were workers) out of the strike, shunned the trade unions and did not allow the local legislators to interfere. All this was remarkable in a state where the traditional unions are entrenched as workers’ representatives and there is no room for independent action.
The Munnar strike stopped the crucial leaf-picking activity at the height of the harvest season and blocked traffic for a day on the Kochi–Dhanushkodi national highway during the tourist season. Though the agitation did not receive much attention from the mainstream media elsewhere in the country, the state and international media made much of the spontaneous action in which women workers were in control. The establishment was thrown so much off guard that it later resorted to the familiar strategy of tarring the agitating workers. That the women were Tamil-speaking (descendants of labour brought by the colonial state a century ago) was used to portray them as the unknown “other.” That this was a spontaneous action in which the established unions were not given an inch was used to speculate that “Maoists” were pulling the strings.
The workers held firm and in the end they achieved a measure of success when the state government oversaw an agreement between the striking workers and the management. It was a “measure of success” because the management while agreeing to the demand for a 20% bonus has offered it in a package of an 8.33% bonus and an ex gratia payment of 11.67% which add up to the figure of 20% of annual wages. The demand for a hike in daily wages has not yet been agreed to, with more negotiations promised in the weeks to come. The struggle will continue. And workers in other plantations in the state have put their employers on notice by making similar demands.
When tea estate workers agitate for better wages and working conditions, the mainstream media and so-called “labour experts” point to the precarious condition of the tea industry. The stiff competition from China and Sri Lanka and the supposedly onerous provisions of the Plantations Labour Act (PLA) also come in for major analysis. What is hardly mentioned is the poor implementation of the PLA and the indifferent attitude of the state and central governments to the plight of the workers. The media is now replete with the “worries” of the tea industry that goaded by the KDHP women workers’ boycott, trade unions all over the country will be forced to demand higher wages for plantation workers.
In the history of the Indian trade union movement women have not been in the forefront of struggles, though there have been exceptions. The women workers of Mumbai’s textile mills, notably under communist veteran S A Dange and to a lesser measure under Datta Samant, did play an exemplary role in the city’s historic textile strikes. With the declining influence of the trade unions in the organised sector and the expanding informal sector, their limited role has diminished further. The women workers of Munnar have sent out a signal to the established trade unions that this can change.
