Striking tea workers demand rise in minimum wage
NEARLY 150,000 workers at more than 200 Bangladeshi tea plantations went on strike last Saturday (13) to demand a 150 per cent rise to their dollar-a-day wages, which researchers say are among the lowest in the world.
Most tea workers in the overwhelmingly Muslim country are low-caste Hindus, the descendants of labourers brought to the plantations by colonial-era British planters.
The minimum wage for a tea plantation worker in the country is 120 taka (about £1) a day at official rates, but only just over a dollar on the free market.
“Nowadays we can’t even afford coarse rice for our family with this amount,” said Anjana Bhuyian, 50. “A wage of one day can’t buy a litre of edible oil. How can we then even think about our nutrition, medication, or children’s education?”
Unions are demanding an increase to 300 taka (£2.6) a day, with inflation rising and the currency depreciating. They said workers in the country’s 232 tea gardens began a full-scale strike last Saturday, after four days of two-hour stoppages.
Plantation owners have offered an increase of 14 taka (12p) a day, after an 18-taka (15p) rise last year. M Shah Alom, chairman of the Bangladesh Tea Association, said operators were “going through difficult times with profit declining in recent times”.
Researchers say tea workers – who live in some of the country’s most remote areas – have been systematically exploited by the industry for decades.
“Tea workers are like modernday slaves,” said Philip Gain, director of the Society for Environment and Human Development, a research group, who has written books on tea workers.
“Plantation owners have ... kept the wages some of the lowest in the world.”