The Hindu Business Line : Talks soon on bonus for Bengal tea garden staff

The figures
It is estimated that the share of small-growers in the total tea production in Dooars will be about 20 per cent.
In Terai, the small-growers account for 50 per cent of the estimated total production of about 77 mkg.

Santanu Sanyal

Kolkata, Sept. 5 The industry-level negotiations for the payment of bonus for 2006-07 to over 2 lakh workers employed in more than 200 tea gardens in the Dooars and Terai regions of West Bengal will start here shortly.

A total of 24 unions represented by their two apex bodies, namely, the Coordination Committee of Tea Plantation Workers, West Bengal, and Defence Committee for Plantation Workers’ Rights, West Bengal, will participate in the negotiations.

The garden owners will be represented by four organisations — Indian Tea Association, Tea Association of India, Indian Tea Planters’ Association, Jalpaiguri, and Terai Indian Planters’ Association, Matigara, under the umbrella of Consultative Committee of Plantation Associations.

Bonus rates

The bonus rates for 2005-06 varied depending on the Group to which a garden belonged. Thus, Group A gardens paid at the rate 11.25 per cent, Group B at the rate of 10 per cent, Group C at 9.15 per cent and Group D at 8.5 per cent.

There were five other Dooars gardens not belonging to any of these groups and the bonus rates for them varied from 8.5 per cent to 10 per cent. There were 75 gardens in Group A – 66 in Dooars and nine in Teria, 38 in Group B (Dooars and Terai 19 each), 32 in Group C (Dooars 21 and Terai 11) and 13 in Group D ( Dooars eight and Terai five).

Inquiries reveal that the garden owners, despite having achieved higher production in 2006-07, are in favour of paying less bonus for the year than what they paid in 2005-06.

This is because higher production was caused not by increased production in the organised gardens covered under the bonus agreement but by increased production by the small-growers outside the purview of the agreement.

In 1997, the organised gardens in Dooars produced 131.13 million kg and the bought leaf factories (entirely dependent on small-growers) processed one million kg. In 2004, the production by bought leaf factories increased to 17.39 mkg out of the total production of 135. 24 mkg.

Total production

It is estimated that the share of small-growers in the total tea production in Dooars will be about 20 per cent. In Terai, the small-growers account for 50 per cent of the estimated total production of about 77 mkg.

In Terai, a total of 5,573 small-growers have a total cropped area of 7,400 hectares as compared to more than 16,000 hectares under 66 organised tea gardens.

Then there are various administered costs like electricity, fuel, fertilisers and excise and other duties over which the garden owners have no control. The difference in the cost of foodgrains supplied to tea garden workers under the erstwhile public distribution system and the present targeted public distribution system entails 60 paise rise in the cost of per kg of made tea. As it is pointed out, only six to seven per cent of the total cost of a garden is “controllable”.

A spokesman for the Coordination Committee for Tea Plantation Workers in West Bengal, however, made it clear that the unions would demand higher bonus for 2006-07. The total production in 2006-07 was higher than that in 2005-06; also, the average auction price was higher. Bonus, as he emphasised, was not ‘Puja bakhsis’, it was, as per the Supreme Court order, a deferred wage and therefore a statutory payment. The cry about crisis in tea industry, he said, was artificial because more than 90 per cent of the gardens were doing well.

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