The Kerala government-facilitated negotiations between plantation companies and trade unions on wage hike held at Thiruvananthapuram ended this evening without reaching any agreement.
The talks will resume on Wednesday, Labour Minister Shibu Baby John told mediapersons soon after the negotiations closed.
While the trade unions stuck to their demand of raising the daily wage from ₹232 to ₹500, the managements were willing to raise the wage by ₹25. They pointed out that because of the fall in the price of tea and other plantation products they were not in a position to raise wage beyond this.
The entire plantation sector in Kerala, including tea, rubber and cardamom, is on strike since last Monday to press for the ₹500 demand. The strike is spearheaded by the joint council of trade unions. In Munnar, the women tea-leaf pluckers of the Tata-controlled Kanan Devan Hills Plantations Limited are running a separate agitation for the same demand.
Today’s was the third round of talks within the Plantation Labour Committee, which represents the managements and the labour unions as well as the government.