Comments
As the plantation labour strike continued for the third day across Kerala, Pompilai Orumai, a loose coalition of women tea-leaf pluckers at the Tata Tea-controlled Kanan Devan Hills Plantations in Munnar, has announced it will scale up its agitation from Thursday.
Women only group Tension gripped Munnar where two streams of agitations pressing for raising the daily wage from ₹232 to ₹500 were staged.
One stream was led by the joint council of organised trade unions in the plantation sector and the other was led by Pompilai Orumai.
While the Pompilai Orumai had not joined in the trade unions’ strike for the first two days, it took to the strike path independently on Wednesday following Tuesday’s failure of the government-brokered talks in the tripartite Plantation Labour Committee.
Pompilai Orumai, which was formed in the wake of the successful nine-day agitation seeking 20 per cent bonus by women leaf pluckers earlier this month, refused to align with the organised unions and wanted to carry on its own agitation.
Enraged by the ‘anti-trade union’ attitude of the new organisation, members of the joint council barged into the Orumai dharna and allegedly stoned the women workers.
They also allegedly hurled stones at mediapersons, whom they accused to be partial to Pompilai Orumai, and policemen.
Four media persons, a policeman and a woman worker suffered minor injuries and the police carried out a lathi-charge to avert a confrontation.
During their nine-day strike earlier this month, the women tea-leaf pluckers of Kanan Devan had kept the organised trade unions out alleging that trade union leaders worked against the interests of labourers. Fearing loss of their grip on the plantation sector, the trade unions later launched the indefinite strike for higher wages.
Talks next Monday The State government has called the next round for October 5. At the first round of talks, agreements had been reached on housing benefits and health insurance.
The government has decided to set up a committee headed by a senior bureaucrat to study the issue. Trade union sources told BusinessLine that the strike, which has crippled the plantation sector in which nearly three lakh workers were engaged, would continue ate least until next Monday when the third round of talks in the PLC would be held.
They hoped a decision on wage hike would be thrashed out at the next talks.
If not, they warned, the agitation would continue indefinitely on the tea, rubber, cardamom and other plantations.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.