Rising wage theft in tea industry: consequences of ineffective labor market institutions

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the processes and methods involved in appropriating wages through strict-compliance and non-compliance of different laws, leading to various economic and social rights violations in tea plantation which is one of the oldest industries in India. It addresses the various ways that are cited as the apparent grounds of wage appropriation, namely, self-made rules, management control, and workers’ non-compliance with certain norms at the workplace. The study, conducted in 2019, is based on 510 workers across 50 tea estates from 9 major tea-producing districts of Assam, India. In tea industry, wage theft through direct and indirect methods leads to labor rights violations that result from the exploitative ‘control and command’ system, uneven power relations, various information asymmetry on value share, and ineffective existing labor market institutions.

KEYWORDS:

• Wage theft
• tea industry
• exploitative work organization
• labor market institutions

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the editor of Labor History and anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions on the manuscript. This article is drawn from a study entitled 'Decent work for tea plantation workers in Assam: Constraints, challenges and prospects' undertaken by us at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences funded by Oxfam, Germany. However, views expressed in this article are soley ours.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Tea plantation workers in Assam are administratively identified as Other Backward Classes (OBCs). Recently, the Government of Assam proposed to introduce More Other Backward Classes (MOBCs) as administrative category and tea garden workers will be identified as MBCs. In different official documents, OBCs and MOBCs are being interchangeably used. However, within MOBCs category, workers who were brought from tribal belt of India (mainly central and eastern part of country) are demanding for scheduled tribe status (STs) and workers who are from non-tribal belts (mainly coastal areas of eastern and southern part of India) are demanding for OBCs. However, administrative proposal in Assam is to merge all these social compositions and refer this under a single administrative category of ‘tea tribe’ (mostly by nomenclature) because benefits to this category will be disbursed as per MOBCs.

2. Cash wages are the predominant form of wage payment in the southern states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Debdulal Saha

Debdulal Saha is assistant professor at the department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Mohali. Prior to joining IISER, he taught at the Centre for Labor Studies and Social Protection, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Guwahati Campus for over 7 years. His research focuses on poverty and inequality, labor studies, wage, informal sector, and plantation economy.

Chitrasen Bhue

Chitrasen Bhue is assistant professor at the department of economics, Kalahandi University, Odisha, India. His research areas include new institutional economics, agrarian transition in rural India, non-farm sector, and labor market.

Rajdeep Singha

Rajdeep Singha is assistant professor at the Centre for Labor Studies and Social Protection, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Guwahati Campus, Assam, India. His areas of research interest include development economics, poverty, agrarian studies, industrial economics, and labor economics.