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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.
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.
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