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ESTATE LABOUR AND LIFE AMONG THE LINES
A LONG JOURNEY IN TEA DOTTED WITH NOTHING BUT STAINS -A REJOINDER
When you consider the labour issues and company policies (or the lack of policies), the Estate sector performs the worst in terms of selected socio-economic indicators
While Tea export contributes to a significant percentage of total export earning (US$ 1.27 bln per year) the Estate Worker scores the lowest in social indicators (1) Literacy (2) Life
expectancy (3) Maternal and Child mortality (4) Lowest in Educational Achievement and (5) Poor primary health.
expectancy (3) Maternal and Child mortality (4) Lowest in Educational Achievement and (5) Poor primary health. We must also recognise the fact that despite the colonial legacy the Tea sector supports some well managed tea plantations in the 75,000 ha (of a total of 203,000 ha in the country) under tea by the Regional Plantation Companies (RPCs) while some plantations have failed to face the challenges posed successfully. What the author of the above article (DM 20 June) had missed in analyzing is that though the Tea Industry itself is labour intensive, labour had come to be seen in the post privatised years more as a cost than a resource.
The Enclave Culture
The enclave culture is a legacy where resident labour (mostly of South Indian origin ) have come to be identified as a separate community.
Some characteristics of this socio economic group are
- Tea Plantation workers are distinctly different from the local peasant farmer.
- Around 80 percent of the Indian Tamils are concentrated in the tea plantations.
- They are housed in rows of rooms which are generally called labour lines. These rooms are strategically located in different parts of the tea estate to enable labour deployment and protect the boundary of the estates.
- The nature of work needs the involvement of both male and female labour force. Plucking of tea leaves is a specialised job done by mainly the female workforce.
- Tea workers come under the category of wage earners and their daily wage is determined bi annually through the Collective Agreement (CA) between Trade unions and the Employers Federation of Ceylon (on behalf of the Planters Association of Ceylon LJESW, JPTU and the apex body of the RPC Management (represented by the EFC).
The writer says school dropouts have increased in the Tea estates particularly in the Central Province, and despite promises by the PHDT (Plantation Human Development Trust ) a joint body of Plantation companies and the state to assure adequate housing, 20 perch land ownership / vegetable plots and a dairy cow per household, these have not been fulfilled.
Housing units have remained below 240 sq feet (with some exceptions in a few plantation companies) in many EPF/ETF dues have not been settled, with wages largely moved to casual category and deployed through contract labour. Sanitation remains an issue, despite donor agencies and NGOs targeting the building of domestic toilets. Estate Water Schemes managed by joint committees (of company representatives and resident labour) operating sub optimally.
One needs to understand that the cost imperative of minimizing registered labour/permanent labour (in preference to piece rate contract labour) is not an option for many of the RPCs.
Productivity and Socio economic and Environmental factors.
A study in 2014 had found in a sample of 105 workers in 10 estates managed by 6 RPCs: (1) Poor Socio Economic conditions (2) Work Norms which are traditional / gender biased (3) Weak cooperation between Workers and Management (poor employee engagement) (4) Skewed relationship of the estate management, more towards the demands of the company than the workers have affected labour productivity adversely. The dominant Unions in the estates very often do not facilitate Employee /management consensus on work norms, through their employee representatives within the firm.
Demand / Supply Mismatch
When you consider the above labour issues and company policies (or the lack of policies) the Estate sector performs the worst in terms of selected socio-economic indicators such as (1) Mean household income, (2) Housing and educational attainment (3) Net income per household per month.
Low level of income of tea estate workers has limited their access to a wider range of economic choices which in turn adversely impact performance. Even the improved wages agreed in 2016 Rs. 780/= (and Rs.1000/= per day) is not adequate in comparison to other sectors in the economy.
Socio Economic Imbalance
The Labour force in the Plantation sector can generally be categorised into three (3 ) segments
(1) The older workers (male and female) more location centric and to a large extent unwilling to move even within the same RPC estates. (2) The Educated Youth who had qualified above GCE OL and (3) The young worker who has not achieved any secondary education qualification.
The third category above have the following options:
- Seek work opportunities in the nearest town (rural) or village
- Be employed as monthly salaried staff of retail shops
- If female, seek Middle East employment as Housemaids
- Seek employment as Seamstress/Machine operator in garment factories located close to estate housing.
- Migrate out to urban centres as domestic servants (mostly to Colombo)
- Engage in vegetable cultivation/retailing them in the estates by themselves.
- Undertake animal husbandry (Dairy cattle and /or poultry) while being resident in the estates.
While the younger generation from resident estate worker families are reluctant to follow their parents into available manual jobs (as pluckers or as workers in the field or in the factory) Poor Self Esteem arising from peer comparison, low social recognition prompt them to pursue any one of the above options leading to the perennial labour shortage in unskilled categories.
Addressing the Imbalance
A major grievance highlighted in this feature and supported in one research study (CEPA 2005) is the tension between the opportunity to be gainfully employed and equal treatment in employment which is very pronounced among the youth. This is aggravated by restricted living space in estate housing.
While Management takes the position that the housing is workers’ quarters, while workers assume that it his/her right to decide how they live and where they choose to work, “while seasonality is an inherent agricultural variable, many estates attempt to maintain more casual labour than registered labour” This is actively practiced by many RPCs (surprisingly among some blue chips which have plantation companies within their group.)
This situation leads the estate population (specifically youth in category 2 and 3 above) not to participate in the workforce and opt for alternatives or even remain unemployed. Which in turn reduces drastically the household income potential and perpetuates poverty among the majority of the workers. This is a vicious cycle.
In some ways this imbalance can be rectified so that a productivity based (out grower) wage model can be owned by the workers (Planters Association refers to this as the PBRS model).
Creating awareness and bringing the worker groups (within unions) to cooperate with the management of the estates which must be pursued outside the ambit of the union action committees (UAC) and needs to be negotiated.
Some specific ways are to
- Reach consensus with the top management of RPCs of the need for the above change in employment policy (adopt fair practice of registering workers on condition of their commitment to the PBRS model)
- Appoint a steering group, comprising experienced planters, HR specialists and worker representatives to develop a joint agenda for change.
- Gain the acceptance of the major unions (during the re-negotiation of the Collective Agreement)
- Develop a Framework to implement the mechanism to improve/strengthen each of the socio economic factors identified above.
- Once the pilot results are experienced go before the unions to gain full acceptance for implementation of these policies.
- Directors of RPCs can then sanction them as the employee policies/incorporate them into the CA (if it is deemed necessary).
The author is a retired Senior Consultant of the IDA, World Bank. An Institutional Specialist in several Multilateral donor funded projects including the ADB, JICA and UNDP for over twenty years and an equal number of years in the private sector. He is a double masters holder MBA (PIM) and M.Sc (OB) Lon. He can be reached at [email protected] .The opinion and policies recommended above are based on his personal experience in Tea Sector projects.
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