TMC union starts tea strike - Protest contrary to govt stand

TT, Jalpaiguri, June 26: A Trinamul tea workers' union today started an indefinite hunger strike in a garden, demanding fringe benefits from owners and going against the government's line that estate hands were getting these facilities by and large.

The strike by the INTTUC garden unit was called in the Rheabari tea estate in Banarhat, Jalpaiguri.

The protest has happened within a month of a senior official of the Trinamul-led government saying that they had no reports that fringe benefits by owners - such as cooking wood and medical facilities - were not being allowed in some gardens.

INTTUC is supported by Trinamul.

Union minister of state for commerce and industry Nirmala Sitharaman had raised the issue of fringe benefits not reaching tea workers in a recent visit to Bengal.

This morning, 24 workers of Rheabari - 14 women and 10 men - launched the agitation in front of the factory gate.

"The management has been consistently curtailing fringe benefits to which we are entitled under the Plantation Labour Act. Our quarters are in a ramshackle condition and we are not getting firewood from the management to cook our food. There is not a single ambulance in the garden to transport patients to hospitals," Kumar Biswakarma, an INTTUC leader of Rheabari, said today.

"Services at the garden hospital are also in a pathetic state," he added.

This is the first time any Trinamul tea union has decided to go against the INTTUC's position of siding with the administration and demanded benefits for workers.

INTTUC leaders in Jalpaiguri, asked about the hunger strike, were baffled.

"There must have been some genuine problems, otherwise our workers are against any agitation. They are into the indefinite hunger strike at Rheabari in a peaceful manner and their agitation is not affecting regular activities or production in the garden," Mithu Mohanta, the Jalpaiguri district INTTUC president, said. "All other workers who did not sit on hunger strike have joined their duties."

He added: "I will visit the garden tomorrow and will speak to them. We would also try and speak to the management so that the demands of workers can be fulfilled."

At Rheabari, Biswakarma said: "We have tried to draw the management's attention on these issues during the bipartite meetings but the management seems to have turned a deaf ear to our demands. The workers were forced to sit on the indefinite hunger strike as they had no other option left."

There are 936 workers in the garden and the population is around 3,500, local sources said.

Gayatri Gurung, a woman leader of the INTTUC and a worker at Rheabari on hunger strike, spoke about some of the problems.

"Several posts of workers, staff and sub-staff are vacant for years. Despite having a considerable population of jobless youths, the management is engaging some retired workers on contractual basis and not filling up these posts," Gayatri said.

"There had been an elaborate meeting with the management last year where it was decided that they would meet our demands (for fringe benefits). However, nothing has changed," she said.

Since 2011, when the INTTUC and some other trade unions backed by Trinamul started mushrooming in the tea belt, they have held public meetings and rallies, but the outfit never joined the Joint Forum, a conglomeration of tea unions that has been demanding a better deal for tea workers.

The Joint Forum has led an agitation for industrial wages and better wage rates. Regarding both these issues, the INTTUC preferred to sit out. The outfit had also rubbished Sitharaman's allegation of lack of fringe benefits to workers.

A trade union source today said that the INTTUC garden union's protest vindicated what the Joint Forum had been saying for months about reducing fringe benefits to labourers.

"Today's agitation, launched by the local INTTUC leaders of Rheabari, however, has raised a question on the information that officials of state labour department have with them," a political observer said. "It would only mount pressure on the state to intervene as the Union minister's remarks have been endorsed by the Rheabari workers."

The source said: "The movement has endorsed the claims of anti-Trinamul trade unions like Citu and Intuc."