Tea Production in Sri Lanka - Labour

Labour

Directly and indirectly, over one million Sri Lankans are employed in the tea industry. A large proportion of the workforce is young women and the minimum working age is twelve. As tea plantations grew in Sri Lanka and demanded extensive labour, finding an abundant workforce was a problem for planters. Sinhalese people were reluctant to work in the plantations. Indian Tamils were brought to Sri Lanka at the beginning of the coffee plantations. Immigration of Indian Tamils steadily increased and by 1855 there were 55,000 new immigrants. By the end of the coffee era there were some 100,000 in Sri Lanka. Young girls typically follow their mothers, grandmothers and older sisters on the plantations, and the women are also expected to perform most of the domestic duties. They live in housing known as "lines", a number of linearly attached houses with just one or two rooms. This housing system and the environmental sanitation conditions are generally poor for laborers in the plantation sector. There are typically 6 to 12 or 24 line rooms in one line barrack. Often rooms for laborers are without windows and there is little or no ventilation and as many as 6 to 11 members may often live in one room together. In the housing system for plantation workers in Sri Lanka, women and girls have no privacy from the male workers, which places them at a higher risk for sexual harassment. In June 2007, a study conducted in the Nuwara Eliya tea growing area revealed that the serious lack of privacy has led several women to commit suicide, especially newly wedded women. According to studies by Christian Aid, the female Indian Tamil plantation workers are particularly at risk from discrimination and victimization. Some concern towards women's rights have been made in regards to the female plantation workers in Sri Lanka, resulting in some 85 neighborhood women's groups being formed across the country, educating them in gender, leadership and preventing violence against women.

The tea plantation is structured in a social hierarchy and the women, who often consist of 75%-85% of the work force in the tea industry, are at the lowest social strata and are powerless. This is not unusual as the subordinance of women under men is present domestically and in the social community in many parts of Sri Lanka. Wages are typically particularly low. In Nuwara Eliya, women were once paid as little as 7 rupees per kilogram, the equivalent of 4 pence, or 7 cents, and many must complete 16 kilograms a day. Given the social stratification in Sri Lanka's past, the pay had to be collected by a husband or father. The men who work on the tea plantations typically cut down trees or operate machinery and are better paid at 155 rupees (82p) a day and finish the day hours earlier. Due to the severely low wages, industrial action took place in 2006. Wages in the tea sector were increased with the average daily wage earned in the sector now significantly higher at 378 rupees for men and 261 for women in some places. However studies have revealed that poverty is still a major problem and despite the tea industry employing a large number of poor people, employment has failed to alleviate poverty since workers are often highly uneducated and unskilled. Poverty levels on plantations have consistently been higher than the national average and although overall poverty in Sri Lanka has declined in the last thirty years, it is now significantly concentrated in rural areas. Poverty in the estate sector has been reported to be increasing with roughly one in three suffering from poverty, rising from 30 percent in 2002 to 32 percent in 2006/07. Likewise, Nuwara Eliya showed a significant increase in poverty among workers from 2002 to 2006/07 from 22.6 percent in 2002 to 33.8 percent in 2006/07. But by no means is employment secure in the tea sector in Sri Lanka. Like other industries, job security in the tea industry has been threatened by the current financial crisis. In Sri Lanka over 50,000 private sector employees are expected to lose their jobs in 2009 due to the current slump.