Deadlock on tea plantations
View(s):Sri Lankan plantation companies and tea estate workers continue to be in a deadlock for nearly a year – the longest to reach a consensus on the wage hike. A date for the next meeting between the two parties is expected by the end of this month.
Both Regional Plantation Companies (RPC) and the Ceylon Workers Congress (CWC), the largest representative of the tea estate workers, blamed the delay on smaller trade unions who were biding time until the government brought legislation to increase private sector wages by Rs.2500.
The RPCs have proposed to the trade unions a productivity based model or a revenue share model similar to what is practiced by the smallholders. Under one proposal, a block of land which belongs to the government and to which RPCs have lease-hold rights would be allocated to each worker, RPC Chairman Roshan Rajadurai told the Business Times.
He noted that right now workers were assigned rows on the plantations. Similarly they would be allocated blocks to pluck leaves and depending on the output they could share a small portion of the revenue with the plantation companies. Should prices increase then it could result in higher earnings for both parties.
However CWC Vice President Arul Samy told the newspaper that the companies needed to be more specific regarding the modalities of how this smallholder system could operate. He pointed out that while the productivity based system was not acceptable they still required more information on the other system proposed by the RPCs.
The collective bargaining agreement is valid for two years by the consenting parties and negotiations usually reach a consensus within three or four months, after its expiry. The agreement which was to be renewed in March 2015 reached a stalemate as the RPCs were unable to agree on a wage hike citing global tea price declines affecting the overall revenues of the plantation companies.
It is in this scenario that the workers have been asked to change the archaic model in use since the colonial era when the British first planted tea in Sri Lanka to a more productive system.