Tea industry urges productivity-based wage model before it sinks- by Sanath Nanayakkare

Source:Island

The Planters Association yesterday assured that tea industry workers will be able to earn between Rs.40,000-50,000 monthly if a wage model linked to productivity is incorporated when the new collective agreement is signed in January 2021 determining worker wages

“We can even exceed the rhetorical demands made by trade unions and some politicians that tea industry workers should be paid a daily wage of Rs. 1,000. They made these demands without accounting the output, revenue and other facilities provided to the workers who are resident on the estates and are assured of continuous work. We can ensure that if this model is introduced their earnings would go up to Rs. 40,000-50,000 a month, while also guaranteeing them 300-days work during the year,” they said.

The Planters’ Association of Ceylon made these comments at a virtual press conference titled, ‘Towards Sustainable Livelihood for Every Plantation Worker’.

“But to do this, we all need to agree on a revenue model for generating financial income. We can pay higher wages only from the revenue. Depending on external resources to pay wages is not sustainable. Current attendance-based model is not viable. Workers need to be motivated to pluck tea leaf as efficiently as those working in the tea lands of smallholders. In tea smallholdings workers hold the key to productivity. We also have experimented this in our RPCs with encouraging results for all stakeholders and this best practice needs to be incorporated in our collective agreement if the industry is to move forward in the long term,” Bhathiya Bulumulla, chairman of the Planters Association of Ceylon said.

“A productivity-based wage model will give the workers a self-managed entrepreneurial mindset and more dignity where good workers are duly rewarded and then we can also prevent them from migrating to other jobs in cities. In the Covid-!9 situation, plantation industry has not shed a single worker or cut their pay like in many other industries. We must make this resilience more meaningful to the RPCs, trade unions and our workers on an equal scale. We should all therefore work collaboratively for the betterment of the industry or otherwise we would all sink. If a favourable arrangement can be made where workers can earn Rs. 40,000-50,000, I don’t see why there should be any opposition to it from the trade unions,” Planters Association Ceylon spokesman Roshan Rajadurai said.

“Workers who would thus turn out to be valuable partners of RPCs should be able to add to productivity by plucking between 30-40 kilos of tea leaf a day in the same manner it is achieved in tea smallholdings while looking after their respective tea blocks for sustainable plucking for a constant livelihood. The nimble hands of our women workers would also be able to do the same and earn more,” they said.