Tea wage talks deferred yet again

SNS, Siliguri, 9 December 2014: The state labour department has again rescheduled the sixth tripartite meeting on tea workers’ wages that was supposed to be held on 12 December.

The meeting was originally scheduled for 8 December, but was postponed to the 12th. Today, the department said that the meeting will be held for two days at Uttarkanya from 15 December.

“The date for the tripartite meeting has been changed because state labour minister Moloy Ghatak will have to attend an important Cabinet meeting on 12 December,” joint labour commissioner Md Rizwan said.
Eight months since the earlier tripartite wage agreement for tea workers expired, nothing has been finalised yet to hike the workers’ wages; this is also at a time when the Joint Forum (JF) of 23 trade unions has decided to stick to its demand for a wage structure and implementation of the Minimum Wages Act (MWA).
Significantly, this is for the first time that almost all the trade unions (except for the Trinamul Congress-backed one) associated with tea plantations have united to demand the MWA.
Even the GJMM-backed trade union, which dominates the Hills and partly the Dooars and the Terai region, in association with a splinter group of the Akhil Bharatiya Adivasi Vikas Parishad, has started demanding implementation of the MWA alongside the JF.
With support from the GJMM, the JF has decided to demand a wage hike for one year in the interest of the workers. JF leaders have already asked the state labour department to begin dialogue over the implementation of the MWA by scrapping the concept of the traditional three-year wage agreement. The labour department is reportedly in a dilemma over the stand of the trade unions, because a wage settlement will be delayed if discussions start from a new agenda.
Notably, the JF held a meeting at Chalsa in the Dooars to maintain unity and to stick to its stand.
Sources said the JF will hold another meeting with key leaders to formulate strategies before attending the next tripartite meeting.
Tea workers in the Hills still get Rs 90 a day. Their wages was settled through a bipartite meeting during the Left Front regime. Workers in the Terai and the Dooars get Rs 95 a day on the basis of the last three-year wage agreement, which ended on 31 March this year.