The tea sector in Asia still has a ‘grim’ record on observing accepted workplace standards, according to a new study.
The survey, by the India Committee of the Netherlands (ICN), found a
‘sad picture of large scale violation of internationally accepted
standards’ such as ILO core conventions on labour issues, with
especially poor performance on wages, health and safety and
working hours.
It says child labour is ‘frequently used’ in the production of tea in
countries such as India and Indonesia, and that ‘geographical and
socio-economic isolation’ of tea plantations in India and Bangladesh is
‘one of the factors behind the vulnerable dependency of
plantation workers’. It adds that closure or abandonment of
unprofitable tea plantations in India over the past five to ten years
has left workers ‘in complete destitution’, with no corporate plans to
help unemployed workers after operations have ceased.
The ICN, which carried out the study with the Dutch pressure group
Somo, concludes that ‘supply chain responsibility is an underdeveloped
concept in the tea industry’ and that generally speaking, CSR
initiatives that do exist – such as the Ethical Tea Partnership (ETP),
a partnership between 17 tea companies that aims to monitor
social conditions of tea production, and Unilever’s Sustainable
Agriculture Initiative for Tea – ‘do not offer more than a token
involvement of stakeholders on an advisory level’.
While it calls the ETP ‘the only CSR initiative of any standing
in the tea sector’, it wants to see it allow workers to become involved
in monitoring and verification processes and to publish its audit
reports.
