Tea Pickers In Wayanad, India. Steenbergs/Flickr. (CC 2.0 by)
In a rare event in the history of labour resistance, 12,000 low caste tea plantation workers in the south Indian state of Kerala went on strike in September 2015 for almost a month. They demanded an increase in daily wages from Rs. 232 to Rs. 500 (£2.50 to £5.17)—matching the basic minimum wage of other manual labour in Kerala—a 20 percent annual bonus, and an improvement in welfare measures, specifically with regard to facilities in the plantation hospital. They also called for an end to the corrupt alliance between the trade union leaders and the plantation companies. The strike attracted worldwide attention for two reasons. First, it was entirely organised and led by women, who constitute around 70 percent of the tea plantation labour force. Second, it was organised autonomously by the workers, keeping the trade unions at bay. What is less well known about the women strikers is that they were Dalits (from the lowest ranking castes), whose ancestors had been imported to the colonial plantations in Kerala from the neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu as indentured labourers. Fighting the giant multinational plantation company and the mighty trade unions, these Dalit women protesters became known as Pembillai Orumai—Women’s Unity.
The Kerala tea estates—situated in what is known as the Munnar tea belt—had been run for decades by corporate giant Tata Tea Limited. This changed in 2005, when 70 percent of shares were transferred to stakeholders—including the plantation workforce—to form Kannan Deval Hills Plantations Company. This was then claimed to be the largest employee-owned company in the world. However, the striking women workers argue that the new company has actually suspended and/or diluted the welfare measures they were obliged to provide under the plantation labour act of 1951. It was this suspension of welfare measures, alongside the rejection of wage hikes and the corrupt alliance between the trade unions and the plantation company, that eventually led to the women workers to strike.
