Labour file:
Brewing Wage Struggle of Tea Plantation Workers in Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka is one of the tea
exporting countries on a world
scale. It has been earning much
wanted foreign exchange for the
country. Tea garden workers are
instrumental in bringing about
economic development and foreign
exchange to their country. Tens of
thousands of workers are toiling in
this sector. Most of them are
women workers. Most of the
workers hail from Sri Lanka’s
Malayatra Tamil community.
These workers toiled in the tea
estates steadily building Sri
Lanka’s economy by earning
precious foreign exchange. These
workers pluck tea leaves all the day
in rain or shine braving blood
sucking leeches or stinging wisps
– a very hard work done by them.
But their working and living
conditions are pathetic. Colonial
era exploitation of the tea
plantation workers is carried out by
the employers even in these
modern days. These workers are
paid with paltry wages just to barely
live. In the present day of severe
inflation and economic crisis even
those meager wages paid by the
employers are insufficient to
workers to make both ends meet.
The Sri Lankan rupee hit a record
low of 166 per dollar and has been
dropping further, hitting hard the
lives of the tea plantation workers.
With the spiraling living costs, even
a kilo of rice-staple diet for workers-
costs more than 100 Sri Lankan
rupees (INR. 44/-) making life for
them impossible to bear.
From 2016, the tea plantation
workers of Sri Lanka have been
agitating to hike their daily basic
22
wage from LKR.220/- with another
couple of hundreds by way of
incentives and allowances tied to
their productivity and attendance,
to LKR 1000 (Rs.430). Even this
minimum basic wage demanded by
the workers is lesser than what a
2018 study done by the Institute of
Social Development, Kandy, found
the necessary minimum living wage.
The necessary living wage
according to this institute is LKR
1108 assuming that the worker gets
25 days of work per month. The tea
plantation working community is
living in a horrible conditions
lacking public health, education
and housing needs.
The employers who are
making huge super profits have
been adamant and pay a deaf ear
to the just demand of workers. In
the name of global competition and
cutting the costs of production they
are denying the just demand for
wages of workers. They are crying
hoarsely that the demand of
workers for wage hike is
unreasonable. The Sri Lankan
government is not sympathetic with
the workers woes. Some of the
plantation trade union leaderships
are siding with employers.
However, for the last two years
the agitation for wage hike by
plantation workers has been
persistently growing. These
agitations have been spreading
outside the confines of their union
and location to the capital city
Colombo and even as far as Jaffna
in the north. Solidarity actions and
support from other sectors are
steadily growing in support of the
tea plantation workers just
demand.
In October last year,
Colombo’s ecosic eplle fasa
witnessed a sea of black, when
several thousand protestors
thronged the beach front calling for
a wage hike for tea estate workers.
The crowd largely comprised youth
from the Malayan Tamil community
employed in the capital in various
jobs spanning the professional and
service sectors. They demanded
higher wages for workers
highlighting broader concerns
about public health, education and
housing needs of the community.
However the recent round of
negotiations and the subsequent
signing of the collective agreement
on January 28, 2019, the
employers have agreed only to a
wage hike up to LKR 855/- against
the demand of LKR 1000/-,
including ETF/EPF benefits and
incentive tied to productivity.
This is how we find that
imperialist globalization economic
policies playing havoc with the lives
of tea plantation workers that is
ruthlessly and inhumanly exploiting
their labour.
The same has been the state
of tea plantation workers in
Vietnam, Bangladesh, India and
other tea exporting countries. This
is the real demonic face of the
economic liberalization policies of
imperialist globalization that are
being portrayed as ‘human face’
and their so-called inclusiveness.
This state of pathetic plight of
tea plantation workers throughout
the world stresses on the immediate
necessity of waging stead fast
struggles by the tea plantation
workers and the solidarity they
need to be extended from other
classes of people in the world.
Class Struggle