Tea surplus payment offer

VIVEK CHHETRI, TT, 07 Sep 2019,  Darjeeling: The Darjeeling Tea industry management and unions are trying to pull a rabbit out of the hat to corner each other during the ongoing bonus negotiations.

A day after the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha's Binay Tamang camp dared the management to "close all 87 tea gardens and leave" if they fail to pay bonus at the rate of 20 per cent, the Darjeeling Tea Association came up with a first-of-its-kind offer.

Sandeep Mukherjee, principal secretary, DTA, on Friday offered to go through the audited balance sheet of every company and stated that the company would pay the surplus reflected in these sheets.

Stating that the industry is not in a position to pay bonus at the rate of 20 per cent of workers' annual earnings, Mukherjee proposed: "If the trade unions are not convinced, the individual company is agreeable to pay as per allocable surplus reflected in the audited balance sheet of the companyThe minimum bonus the industry has to pay is 8.33 per cent of the workers' annual earning.

"Gardens can only pay bonus as per their respective financial capacity. The fact that certain gardens are functioning without closing down in itself is quite a feat," said Mukherjee.

Hill gardens are grouped into four categories: A,B, C and D, and negotiations have also been done group-wise. This is the first time that the management is looking at company-wise negotiations.

Sources said that the unions were not agreeable to this new proposal from the management.

Amar Lama, a trade union leader of the Joint Forum, a conglomeration of 26 trade unions, said: "This companywise negotiation is unacceptable. It has to be industrywiseThere are 87 tea gardens in the Darjeeling hills.