The nine-day-long all-women strike by tea-leaf workers in Kerala’s Munnar hill resort that ended in triumph on Sunday has baffled established trade unions and political parties.
In a State where workers cannot dream of carrying out a successful strike without an established union’s support, the strike by 5000 women leaf pluckers of the Kanan Devan Hills Plantations Company (formerly Tata Tea) was itself historic. The strike was carried out, led and organised all by women, mostly the Tamil-speaking tea-leaf pickers, without the involvement of any trade unions. In fact, the agitating women workers kept all trade union leaders out and even packed off a few senior trade-union leaders who had graciously offered to lead. Only V. S. Achuthanandan, the senior CPI(M) leader, was allowed to join in. They also exposed how the `non-working’ trade union leaders in the plantation sector took bribes in the form of houses, plots of land and jobs for their children from the managements.
The women got the management to cede their main demand of `20 per cent bonus.’
The agitation has been termed a `jasmine revolt’ against the trade-unions as well as the plantation managements in the State. “I view this as the green shoots of a new political culture in Kerala where politicians and trade union leaders think without them nothing can happen,” D.B. Binu, leading right-to-information activist and general secretary of Human Rights Defence Forum, told BusinessLine. “These women realised that the established trade unions stood against their interests.” The fact that the entire State rejoiced the snubbing of union leaders showed the common people’s frustration with the trade union dictatorships, he noted. It also showed that trade union dictatorship would not survive.
Charles Geroge, who has led several mass agitations of fish workers, told BusinessLine that the tea workers’ strike slapped several lessons on to the faces of the trade unions and political parties in the State. “It’s a warning that union leaders should change their way of functioning, their behaviour with workers, their commitment and their priorities.” The fact that it was women, that too the `real working class’ women, who had led the agitation was all the more important.
How could the women workers sustain the agitation for nine long days and, in the process, gain the support of the Kerala public is being investigated by the political parties and the trade unions launched by them. For nine days, the women workers had held up work on the KDHP plantations, stalled the town of Munnar and successfully negotiated with the government and the management.
The agitation’s success has been looked upon as the beginning of a workers-led trade union movement in Kerala.