Pete Mason, East London Socialist Party, and Akhter Khan, Member secretary, UK branch of Committee to Protect the Natural Resources of Bangladesh
Around 150,000 tea plantation workers, the lowest paid workers in Bangladesh, went on all-out strike on 13 August across 167 tea plantations. They struck at peak production time, crippling the employers. They won a partial victory and returned to work on 29 August amid celebratory marches.
The strike was a big step forward for the most oppressed workers in Bangladesh, who were earning just over £1 a day, or 120 taka (Tk). They demanded 300Tk, but returned to work with 170Tk, a 40% increase. The minimum wage in Bangladesh is 263Tk, but the tea workers are exempt from it.
This exemption is part of the legacy of the occupation of the Indian subcontinent by the British ruling class, who starved and taxed Indian rural poor and tribes peoples off their land and transported them to what is now Bangladesh, to work on tea plantations during the 1800s and early 1900s.
Starvation wages
One recent study states that the British owned Assam Company transported 2,272 labourers between December 1859 and November 1861 out of which 250 died on transit, more than 10% of the total. They were then enslaved in their “tea gardens”. Despite many heroic protests against despotic treatment over the decades since, even the mainstream Bangladesh press does not hesitate to state that the tea workers today are paid starvation wages in a remnant of the colonial past.
In 2018, the British government’s Department for International Development published a report titled ‘Modern slavery within the tea industry in Bangladesh’. That report demonstrates the huge difficulties which this isolated section of workers subsequently overcame in the national strike, while concealing the true role of British imperialism. In fact, the report ironically laments “ineffectual union representation” despite the various tea unions having increased their strength by merging into one. The workers were building their forces.
Starvation caused the strike. “Some days we don’t even get to eat, which is why we are protesting”, a worker told Al Jazeera. The strike was a tremendous display of workers’ unity and courage. The plantation owners claimed they were losing £1.75 million a day during the strike – but the workers were literally starving. They initially held a two-hour strike on 9 August, across the 241 tea gardens that make up the 167 plantations in the country. The plantation owners had offered 14Tk a day. This was rejected and the strike started on the 13th. On 22 August the government, composed of capitalists and plunderers (who extract the wealth of Bangladesh for their own private use abroad) was forced to intervene. This government, which has done nothing to put an end to the brutal post-colonial tea plantation regimes, fixed a pitiful 25Tk rise, in consultation with the plantation owners.
Strikers take charge
At this point, it was widely reported that the leadership of the Bangladesh Tea Workers Union had accepted the deal – something that they later denied – and instructed the workers to return to work. A return to work was reported at various tea gardens, only for the workers to walk out again the following day. The workers had met, organised through local tea garden committees, and angrily rejected the deal.
As the strike resumed the workers came together to stage demonstrations – in front of the Sreemangal Labour Department office, blocking the Dhaka-Sylhet highway and the Airport Road in Sylhet, as well as at various tea gardens, demanding the full 300Tk claim.
This took the strike to a new level and will act as a warning to the plantation owners. It showed there are roots of the union in the local area committees, mostly made up of women workers, who are the majority of the tea workers in the fields.
Plantation owners’ claims
The plantation owners claimed that the workers actually earned the equivalent of 500Tk, because they get food rations, housing, health and education. Even if true, this should be no substitute for a living wage because it ties them to the plantation and forms part of the modern slavery of the workers.
But in truth the food ration was insufficient. The housing consists of small huts with mud floors and bamboo walls, without sanitation or running water. The employers fail to make health benefits, even for childbirth, readily available to the workers. Sick leave is almost inaccessible and rarely taken. Paid holiday leave is also rarely taken – only 3.7% take this up, according to a recent study. The workers are largely illiterate since children often work alongside their parents to ensure they meet their daily quota, without which their wages are slashed, and miss having education. Furthermore, the employers have failed to invest, letting the industry fall behind the international competition, while enjoying fat profits earned from revenue of US$1.86 billion according to figures available for 2022.
“I can eat three meals now”
On 27 August the government was forced to intervene again and this time offered a 50Tk increase. Although not the 180Tk increase the workers demanded, it appears that they viewed the offer as an acceptable compromise. The government promised that “all facilities will increase at a proportional rate” The plucking bonus and factory work income, annual leave allowance, festival leave and sick leave will increase proportionately, according to the agreement.
The workers will go from one meal a day – and sometimes not eating at all – to three meals a day, according to reports. Many will feel that more could have been won. But the main gain of the strike will be a greater awareness of their rights, the benefits to which they are due, the power of strike action, and undoubtedly a certain change in the balance of power between them and the employers who will not want to see them walk out again.
This will be an ongoing battle, a class war, of which this is only the opening round. The union compromised on the route to 300Tk, but remained intact and strengthened, to fight another day. The urgent issues of the brutal penalty for not meeting their quota, access to decent housing, sanitation, clean water, health, sick pay and annual leave will no doubt now be prominent in the minds of the workers.
