Social issues and worker productivity in plantations... Continued from last week

Dr. N. yagarathnam

The health status of plantation workers had been a subject of discussion for quite some time. These mainly centred around tea pluckers and pointed to the occupational hazards and long working hours and their effect on the worker’s health and productivity.

References have been made to painful abrasions to the hand caused by continuous plucking. It has been calculated that about 1,200 hand movements are involved in harvesting 1 kg of green leaf. That makes it 24,000 hand movements (along with an unwavering eye for leaf standard and an alert mind) for a worker who brings in 20 kg of acceptable leaf in a day.

Also, it is known that carrying the tea basket over the head affects the neck and brings about degenerative changes in the cervical spine. Feet too require protection.

Harvesting shear machines are known to be capable of increasing worker productivity, thus reducing the labour requirement for harvesting. The harvesting shear developed by the TRI, is still not widely used in tea plantations. Several socio - economic factors related to plantation labour appear to influence the slow rate of adoption of shear harvesting.

The user - friendly, light weight aluminum plucking basket that had been developed some time ago, also still remains merely as an innovation and not widely used. This basket appears to resolve many of the physical problems faced by the tea plucker in her work and is expected to provide some benefits to the industry in terms of worker health, out- turn and productivity besides improving made- tea quality.

Likewise, ageing workers are known to have poor eyesight and, despite the numerous eye camps, they have seldom been provided with or encouraged to wear spectacles.

All these point towards negative attitude of workers as a result of ineffective HRM system. Effective education of workers would rectify this. Attitude may be negative when they are old, very efficient in manual harvesting and having long experience in conventional systems.

In contrast, younger workers with good knowledge of the innovations are likely to be more receptive to use such technologies. Therefore, young workers who have less experience on manual harvesting and who bring below norm or less crop could be advantageously selected and trained in such technologies.

Psychological aspects

Although social and psychological factors are inter related, their margins are not so clear- cut. Low productivity can be a state of the mind, especially in pluckers. That is because here is someone unwilling to put an effort to improve her living standards. Perhaps, it could be because of mental weariness or boredom has set in or the job she is doing is considered lowly or there is nothing to look forward to in life except retirement as a plucker. What inputs can there be to shake her out of this state of mind?

A change in “attitude” would help matters. This involves developing an element of sensitivity to the negative forces that are at work in the community and to seek inputs that will replace them.

These inputs will add a little zest, a little entertainment and a lot of reasonable commonsense. The job itself can be invested with a technical/ scientific aura by organizing training programme that will shorten the period of acquiring ‘skills in the case of new recruits and upgrade the ‘skills’ of others.

Women in development

The major and often overlooked feature in developing countries is the important role of women in agricultural production. Men perform the initial task of the land preparation but women do about 70 - 80 % of the agricultural activities out of the total work. While African women play the major role in subsistence farming and lesser role in the production of plantation and cash crops, in Asia the situation is reversed.

Nevertheless, in both the African and Asian plantation agriculture sectors, women have heavy responsibilities within the home; house work, food preparation child care. One of the main reasons for the heavy burden is lack of capital and education.

Unfortunately, little effort is being made to improve women’s productivity. Men are usually given access to credit and are taught modern methods of production. As a result, the difference in labour productivity between men and women is growing wider. Gender disparities in human development have been evident in varying degrees in almost all communities, but are severe in the plantation community.

On one hand, the migrant plantation workers brought into the country had a social system based on caste, religious and cultural practices that were patriarchal. On the other , the management system that evolved in the plantations was exclusively males, starting from the lowest level worker supervisors- the ‘kanganies’ As a result, the estate females have always been at a disadvantage at home and at work and have hardly had the opportunities that were available to their male counterparts.

Even as of now, almost all decision- makers, from estate managers to union leaders, in the plantation system are males. As a consequence to the factors, there are large differences in educational attainment and other human development indicators between females and males. These disparities persist despite the important role played by women as caretakers and providers for families in the sector.

Numerous studies have pointed out the positive externalities to families and communities associated with improving the health and educational standards of females. As such, balancing the gender differences is important not only from an equity standpoint but also as a means of developing plantation communities. A critical step in narrowing the gender gap in human development lies in understanding the nature and magnitude of these differences.

Education and health

Education and health is a joint investment in human development. The connections between health and education include similar analytical treatment, since both are forms of human capital.

The dual impact (spending effect) is an intra connection. The fundamental fact that when we speak of investing in person’s health and education, we are after all talking about the same person.

We have to consider the relationship between income on the one hand and health and education on the other. Health and education may be highly unequally distributed in plantations, just as income and wealth.

It must be understood that greater health capital may rise the return on investment in education, because health is an important factor in school attendance, healthier children are more successful/learn more efficiently. On the other hand, dearth of children can increase the cost of education per worker in plantations.

Also, greater education capital may rise the return on investment in health, because many health programs rely on skills learned in school (literacy), as schools teach basic personal hygiene and sanitation.

Education is also needed to formation and training of health personnel.

In the plantation setting, the concern should be more for’ health’ than ‘disease’; that is , more on prevention than cure and also, because of the overwhelming residential population, the concern should be as much for ‘community health’ care as it should be on ‘worker health’.

Improved health care is the means, not the end; the end should be to optimize productivity for which the estate’s prime asset - the workforce - should be kept in good order.

Conflict to confidence

The traditional approach to labour management and industrial relations has been rooted in the conflict scenario wherein labour and management are locked up in adversary positions. Traditionally, union activity has drawn its sustenance from this approach. With liberalization, globalization and increased competition survival has become a matter of joint concern of the management and workers.

Hence, in a competitive situation the approach has to change from conflict to cooperation. This implies that lines of conflict between the workers and management should turn into lines of confidence between the two, i.e., a change should occur from dispute orientated approaches to development oriented approaches.

In plantations, there are four categories of workers viz. passive, active, assertive and aggressive. Further, workers can be classified as work oriented and work shirkers. Usually, the aggressive workers tend to be work shirkers and problem creators. Hence, our aim should be to channelise the energies of such workers for productive purposes.

Though many plantation managers may prefer passive - work performer, however in view of the competitive environment, there is a need for increasing the proportion of active and assertive workers with high work performance orientation because suggestions for improvement in productivity, quality and value - addition, would come only from a work force that is active and assertive but not aggressive or militant. This kind of workforce also prefers the harmonization approach to problem solving and decision making.

Knowledge management

Knowledge management has emerged as an important factor for competitive advantage. The idea of knowledge management is not only applicable to ‘new economy ‘but also to the ‘brick and mortar economy’. The quality of the product and services offered depends upon the ‘knowledge base’ of the workers. If the knowledge base is not constantly upgraded, the product and service quality suffers. An important task is therefore; to continuously upgrade the knowledge base of workforce.

To summerise, in the ultimate analysis, it is a question of structuring the estate management system to move away from a sectional to an integrated approach.

An indepth appreciation of the industry’s major assets -land, standing crop, manufacturing facilities and, equally, the people who generate the wealth from these assets, in relation to the internal and external milieu, is no doubt, of paramount consideration. Yet, it is important to recognize that these factors of production overlap and interact with one another and over varying periods of gestation, throw up issues that have fallouts of larger significance.

Thus, while the field and factory are maintained at optimum functional levels, estate supplies made available without interruption and the workforce kept in good health productivity, a coordinated effort involving community participation is necessary to ensure a smooth working of the estate in pursuit of the primary objective, viz. the production of wealth. It is in this overall context that the dynamics of social and community behavioral pattern becomes an integral part of plantation management practices.

Future perspectives

Despite the improvements registered in recent years, the plantation environment lacks the social and psychological acceptability of an agro - industrial park that makes workers comfortable in their avocation.

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