Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala trade unions’ fights for labour rights are legendary, but in recent times workers seem to have lost their faith in the leaderships of traditional trade unions. Underlining that feeling, hundreds of women workers in a tea plantation company in the state’s hilly district of Idukki are on strike, keeping their trade union leaders out of the action.
Women labourers have been spearheading the workers’ strike at the Kannan Devan Hill Plantation Company in Munnar, raising multiple demands including a 20 per cent hike in bonus. The strike that is five days old has gathered such strength that the tourist resort town of Munnar has been brought to a virtual standstill.
On Tuesday, an estimated 7,000 women organised a rally in Munnar that crippled traffic on the Kochi-Dhanushkodi national highway for most of the day. Strikingly, the flag masts in front of some of the trade union offices were also destroyed, perhaps reflecting the increasing disillusionment with official trade unions and their leaderships.
“We are the ones who pick tea leaves and carry the bags on our shoulders, you are the ones who carry off the money bags,” went one of the slogans by the women workers, directed at the trade union leaders. Interestingly, the women workers kept not just the trade union leaders at bay, but also prevented any men from being in the forefront of the strike.
The striking women workers said union leaders were enticing male workers with the lure of liquor, and that the menfolk were drinking away all their earnings without a thought about their children’s education or medical needs of their families.
The Labour Commissioner’s office called the workers and representatives of the company management and trade unions for a discussion in Kochi on Tuesday, but could not resolve the workers’ grievances.
A few years ago when tea prices went through a sharp decline, some estate owners had abandoned their plantations, leading to the loss of livelihoods for hundreds of workers. The striking women workers allege that even in those dark days, those who were least affected were the trade union leaders.
The women labourers say they have seen enough of how they have been taken for a ride, while trade union leaders advanced in life, some of them even becoming legislators or reaching key posts in political parties, and that they will not let that continue.
Munnar is presently witnessing the workers’ ire against their leaders and the company for what they say has been a fraud played on them for decades.
