Darjeeling tea blockade ends with wage deal

A three-week long blockade of exports of prized Darjeeling tea has ended with the resolution of a deadlock between plantation workers and the estate owners over wage hike demand.

The Darjeeling Terai Dooars Plantation Labour Union, owing allegiance to Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, a political outfit demanding separate Statehood for Gorkhaland, on Tuesday lifted their blockade of 85 tea gardens in the hills of North Bengal since March 6, which prevented dispatch of the freshly-plucked first tea leaves of the season from the gardens to various export destinations.

The lifting of the embargo was conditional upon the workers’ unions and the planters reaching a wage pact by Friday, which was agreed upon on Thursday night.

The wage pact came at a heavy price for the planters, who were forced to agree to it in a desperate move to prevent the rotting of the season’s first tea crop, the most premium of all teas produced during a year and fully exported to Europe and Japan.

Under the three-year pact, the daily wage has been hiked by 35%, to Rs90 from Rs67, the highest so far for the Darjeeling plantation workers.