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In early May 2010, two events occurred, worlds apart, but telling signs of the disconnect between the owners and managers of Tata Tea, a multinational beverages company from India and owners of the Tetley tea brand, and the workers who pluck tea for the company. As Tata Tea trumpeted a new name and global vision for itself, a young woman worker grossly mistreated by the company was desperately trying to avoid jail on false charges brought by the management.
On May 7, following a decision of the board of directors of Tata Tea, the company was renamed Tata Global Beverages. According to R. Krishna Kumar, Tata Tea vice chairman, the change in name, “…demonstrates our intent to build a new and strong global brand” (The Business Standard, 7 May 2010). This “new” global brand, what is it built on? How are the workers who generate the company’s profits year after year treated?
The best way to answer this question is to examine the background of what happened on the same day, May 7, at Jalpaiguri district court house, where 22-year-old young mother Mrs Arti Oraon, with 9 other Tata Tea plantation workers from North Bengal, India, was seeking anticipatory bail to avoid being arrested and thrown in jail on ludicrous charges brought by the company.
Mrs Oraon was the worker who was denied maternity leave at the Nowera Nuddy tea plantation, which is owned by Amalgamated Plantations a company controlled by Tata Tea, and forced to continue working while eight months pregnant. In August of 2009, she collapsed in the field and had to be rushed to hospital after initially being denied treatment at the plantation. While at hospital workers on the plantation protested these conditions. The management response was to shut the plantation and lock all the workers out. What occurred was collective punishment: all workers were denied wages and forced into hunger. The entire plantation was closed for a period of almost four months between August to December 2009. During this extended lockout, local authorities at one stage distributed emergency rations to workers…rations which are normally reserved for victims of natural disaster!
In November, the IUF began a campaign against the violations of human rights at Nowera Nuddy calling for the workers to be allowed back to work, compensation to Mrs Oraon, back wages and rations to be paid and for major concerns regarding working and living conditions to be addressed in real negotiations between the local management and Nowera Nuddy workers. In addition, the suspension of 8 worker activists had to be withdrawn.
Tata Tea responded to the IUF campaign by using a public relations firm to try and paper over the reality of its treatment of the Nowera Nuddy workers. The company was without real or adequate response to the extensive documentation the IUF provided regarding the company’s actions, which if such actions had been undertaken by a country, would be considered war crimes under the Geneva Convention.
On 12 December 2009, Peter Unsworth, CEO of Tata Tea’s Tetley, the world’s second largest tea brand, responded to the IUF campaign with a letter which included the following statement: “We also know that the pregnant woman [Arti Oraon] at the root of the issue had a healthy baby boy and both mother and baby are well.”
In fact, mother and baby were doing so well that in late April 2010 local police came to Nowera Nuddy plantation and announced that there were arrest warrants issued for Arti Oraon for theft, grievous bodily harm, unlawful assembly, criminal intimidation and unlawful confinement. These charges carry jail terms of up to seven years and more.
The real face of Tata Tea is clear: despite being a victim of company violence by being denied maternity leave and forced to work in contravention of India’s Maternity Benefits Act, despite forced to endure working conditions which seriously endangered the life of her baby, despite collapsing in semi-consciousness in the field while working and being transported to hospital on a trailer towed by a tractor after the company doctor refused transport to the garden clinic, despite the refusal of the company to offer an apology or compensation for over six months….Mrs Oraon is now branded a criminal!
These charges brought against Arti Oraon and other workers, including the 8 workers previously suspended, are a sign of an escalating campaign by Tata Tea. The charges are designed to intimidate and force workers to accept a position of total subservience to the dictates of the local management.
The charges brought against Arti Oraon themselves are an utter scandal. That a woman so brutally treated is now subject to criminal charges for actions supposed to have occurred while she was in hospital is simply mind-boggling.
Tata Tea might be on a self-congratulatory mission to rebrand itself as a global beverages company, however in regard to the treatment of tea workers at Nowera Nuddy it has branded itself as a rogue employer committed to denying basic human rights and dignity.
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