About 300,000 plantation workers in India, the world's largest tea producer, began an indefinite strike from Monday for higher wages and more benefits, union leaders said. The strike has shut down hundreds of tea estates in the country's east, the largest tea-producing region, and hit output and exports, tea industry officials said.
Months of talks between plantation companies and unions have failed to resolve workers' demands for higher wages. Unions have also rejected a proposed scheme, which would financially penalise leaf pluckers for failing to meet targets.
"Enough is enough. The workers can't let themselves be exploited endlessly," said Samir Roy, convenor of the defence committee for plantation workers' rights, an umbrella organisation of tea workers in eastern India. "We will continue our strike till the garden owners relent."
The strike affected work in some 300 tea estates in West Bengal state, including those on the foothills of the eastern Himalayas that produce the famous Darjeeling tea.
India's tea industry has been hit in recent years by high production costs and sluggish exports due to competition from producers such as Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Bangladesh and Kenya.
Estate owners say falling international prices and stiff competition from other countries makes it impossible for them to increase wages, which average around 46 rupees ($1.06) a day.
As India's once-prosperous tea industry struggles, workers are increasingly angry at irregular salary payment and a lack of food rations, as the law requires. In West Bengal, 19 people were killed in a fight over the hiring of clerks at an estate in 2003.
The Indian Tea Association (ITA), the largest planters' body, said the strike would result in losses of more than 10 million rupees ($230,000) a day.
"This year the export target is 200 million kg but if the strike is not withdrawn immediately, we can't achieve the goal," an ITA official said from Calcutta, eastern India's tea export hub.
India produced 149.76 million kg of tea in January-April, up 17.7 percent from the same period last year, while exports grew 7.6 percent to 52.80 million.