EDITORIALS

Munnar Upheaval
Women workers pose questions to managements, trade unions, political partiesand men.

he nine-day strike earlier this month by more than 5,000

women workers of the Kanan Devan Hills Plantations
(KDHP) company in Keralas 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 straightforwarda small
hike in the annual bonus from 19% of annual wages last year to
20% this year (as against the KDHP managements 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 175Rs 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 6070 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 ownershipmanagement 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 themselvesthe 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 handskept 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 KochiDhanushkodi national highway during the tourist
season. Though the agitation did not receive much attention
from the mainstream media elsewhere in the country, the state
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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 Mumbais textile mills, notably under communist veteran S A Dange and to a lesser measure
under Datta Samant, did play an exemplary role in the citys
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.
SEPTEMBER 19, 2015

vol l no 38

EPW

Economic & Political Weekly