Sri Lankan plantation unions help companies impose “share-cropping” system
By
M. Thevarajah
17 June 2017
Kelani Valley Plantations in Sri Lanka has begun imposing a new revenue-sharing system at its Battalgalla Estate at Dickoya in the central hills district. The new system, which was imposed with the active support of the plantation unions, transforms workers into share-croppers, slashing their living conditions and social rights. Kelani Valley Plantations promotes itself as an “ethical producer.”
Plantation companies in Sri Lanka have long demanded the implementation of this exploitative system in a bid to maintain profits under conditions of declining tea exports and escalating global competition. Under the retrogressive scheme, workers will no longer be wage workers and their limited but hard-won gains, including provident funds and pensions, housing and medical facilities, will be systematically abolished.
According to a Collective Agreement signed last year, the unions agreed to help impose the revenue-sharing system in all plantations over the next two years. The scheme was endorsed by the government of President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.
The Battalgalla Estate, which has three parts—the Upper Division, Lower Division and Hadley—employs about 240 workers, a third of them on a casual basis. In April, blocks of land containing 1,000 tea bushes in the Upper Division were allocated to 120 workers.
Under legally binding agreements, workers are called “contractors” and only able to work on the allocated land on Sundays. For the rest of the week they are employed in other parts of the estate.
While sections of the plantation were selected to “trial” the new system, the company plans to quickly expand it throughout…