“Strikes Are Normal Growing up”: Plantation Politics in Sri Lanka
An interview with Menaha Kandaswamy, former General Secretary of the Ceylon Plantation Workers’ Union
Menaha Kandasamy, the former General Secretary of the Ceylon Plantation Workers and founding member of the Red Flag Women's Movement.
During the colonial period, plantation were installed on major chunks of rural and forest lands in Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Himachal Pradesh, and Ceylon. Plantations radically transformed these areas. They led to a boom in the cultivation of cash crop like tea, indigo and rubber. They installed a mass, often indentured and migratory, labor force in the countryside. And they generated historic struggles pitting labor against capital. Yet the plantation, its pasts and its present, remains a missing element in much academic and activist conversations on South Asia’s countryside.
Menaha Kandaswamy, the first woman to serve as President and General Secretary of the Ceylon Plantation Workers’ Union, speaks to Hashim bin Rashid and Shafiya Rafaithu about plantations in Sri Lanka. She discusses the history of plantations in the country, struggles around their privatization and nationalization, and the changing nature of capitalist investments in them. She also speaks about insurgent politics on plantations, including the struggles of plantation workers’ unions, the need for cultivating women’s leadership, and the importance of building a transnational movement.
When and why did you decide to get involved in organizing plantation workers?
My father was a trade unionist. My mother was a plantation worker. We had a big family. I used to take lunch to my father at the trade union office on school days. While I did not know much about politics, I would see lots of workers come and cry in front of my father. All of this was maybe internalized in my mind.
We lived in Badulla, but I went on to study at Jaffna University during the war period [1980s]. This was an important experience. There were a lot of struggles going on. I often found myself comparing the struggles in Jaffna with the struggles of plantation workers back home. I would wonder, “Why is there no revolutionary discussion in the plantations?”.
I also noticed that very few plantation children, especially women, were going to university. The plantation children also needed to be encouraged to go for formal studies. We needed to secure both the future of plantation workers and their children, and the children also needed to think about the plantations.
Because of these thoughts, I decided to work with plantation workers when I left university.
What was your early experience of organizing in the plantations?
I did not have any first-hand trade union experience, so I started to work with the plantation community to understand their issues. I focused on women because around 70 percent of plantation workers are women, while the plantation unions were all led by men. The unions would not take women workers’ issues as trade union issues.
I went from estate to estate to speak to the workers. All the women would say they were members of a union. But when you asked them more, they said, “Yes, my husband is in this union and so he gave my membership to that union”.
Women workers were not thinking about which union would address their problems. It was like a family, where the husband decided which union he wanted to be in, and then the whole family who worked in the plantation would also join it.
This was a major vacuum in the trade unions. I spent time with many unions back then and saw the same issue: they were all male-centered. In some unions, there were token women, who were typists or maybe in a more political position, but without any voice.
Having recognized these limitations, I had to decide, “Shall we form a new trade union or work with an existing union?”. While doing my research, I knew that there were already 65 plantation workers’ unions in Sri Lanka. It is a very tiny island and so many unions had already divided workers. So I decided to find a left-oriented union which genuinely worked with plantation workers and where there was not much party politics involved.
This is why I chose the Plantation Workers Red Flag Union. They were concerned about workers and had a good ideology but, gender-wise, they were like the other unions – very male-centered. The union was losing its membership at that time. It was a tough period for them.
The plantation sector was privatized in 1992-1993. 23 private companies replaced the state in managing the plantations. Trade unions around the world had been weakened. Premature retirement was introduced. Men and women from the plantations were trying to go to Colombo.
Young plantation women had begun to read and write. The plantation children were working in cities in small boutiques and as domestic workers. They had become part of the urban working class.
I used a strategy to enter the union. The connection between the leadership and membership was weakening. Women’s representation in unions was weak. We needed to rebuild the trust in the unions – to centre the issues of workers, especially women. This is what I focused on. It worked and won me trust in the union.
What is the history of trade unionism in the plantations?
The Red Flag union was started by people like Pieter Keuneman, who actually thought about the people and left ideology. When this union was registered in the 1940s, it was very militant and committed to workers. Back then, the workers were willing to die for the unions.
A picture from Ceylon Workers’ Red Flag Union’s May day rally in 2018. Image: Omlanka
When the trade union movement started back then, plantation workers were effectively like slaves. They were often semi-bonded. The struggles and solidarities of that time brought about a very vibrant movement. After the victories of the unions, plantation workers started to come out of slavery. The children of women workers also started studying. But once the issues of plantation workers began to be resolved, the struggle also went down.
Even in the 1980s, I saw that people stopped joining trade unions because of a commercialized mentality. Income was very important. People started to focus on how to earn more. Unions back then started hiring typists to create work for young people. Youth then joined the trade unions in the plantations for money and work, not for political reasons.
Then, structural adjustment impacted the plantation sector. All welfare systems inside the plantations were stopped. Plantation unions had to fight for their lost benefits
“Union leaders would say that only a united workers struggle could bring liberation, and women’s problems would be solved afterwards.”
In the 1980s and 1990s, a lot of “yellow” trade unions allied to the employers and the ruling party were propped up. This also diluted the movement. People began to see trade unions differently. Right-wing party politics also began to influence workers. Politicians used trade unions to get votes – they did not recruit members, they bought membership. So workers also learned to get some monetary benefit from joining unions. This is when we saw the dangerous side of trade unions. Even now, if we leave, no progressive trade unions will be left, only “yellow” ones. The latter only talk about wage issues.
The unions, even the militant ones, also ignored gender. I am not saying they deliberately ignored women, but it was a limitation of their thinking. Even in the 1970s, when the unions were Marxist, discussing women workers’ problems was seen as dividing the workers. Union leaders would say that only a united workers struggle could bring liberation, and women’s problems would be solved afterwards. This was a [gender] gap in the beginning and it continued to increase.
These are the reasons I thought it was important to integrate gender into trade unions and bring women workers into their leadership and membership. Only after 2000 did we begin to integrate women’s issues into the union’s constitution and structure. Other unions have also seen what we have done and followed some of it. The workers’ struggle was really powerful in the late 1920s and 1930s. But after the 1960s, it started to go down. However, gender representation in trade unions used to be low before. This started to increase after the 1990s.
There is another thing. I’m not sure if it’s the same across South Asia, but trade unions here are run by non-workers. Workers are not taking leadership. I feel that when workers start to run the union, the union can develop ideologically. Unfortunately that is not happening as much as we would like, but it is something we’ve always stressed in our organizing.
British plantation owner along with his workers at a tea estate. Tea plantations in Sri Lanka date back to 1867. Image: Sri Lanka by Ish
How have the demands of unions changed over time?
The early unions understood bonded plantation workers as essentially slaves. The question for the unions was, “How do we break this slavery?”. They fought for the end of the slavery system, an end to bonded labor, and for acceptance of the unions’ right to negotiate with companies and the state. Back then, the unions’ struggles were directed against the colonial state.
There was a time in post-colonial Sri Lanka when the state sided with labour but, after privatization, that ended completely. Unions had to fight for a new collective agreement. There was an old collective agreement from the 1970s, but a new collective agreement was signed in 2003 between the employers’ federations and the trade unions. Before, when there was an issue between the two, the trade unions would go to the labour minister. But, after privatization, the government began to abandon any responsibility towards plantation workers. They forgot that plantation communities were Sri Lankan communities.
“Society has changed, the government has changed, companies have changed, and capitalism has changed, but the trade unions have stayed the same, except they have lost all fighting spirit.”
Privatization made the trade unions weaker because they could not stand up to employers. Since 2003, the trade unions have been following the new agreement, but it is a very bad system. If companies are violating labour rights, we need to stand up and challenge the government to monitor and enforce them. But today, if we go to the Department of Labour and file a complaint under the Industrial Relations section, the government will stand with employers.
Another thing I want to say is that young people are not attracted towards unions, because there are no new developments or attractions for them. The unions still have old leaders, old systems, old everything. Society has changed, the government has changed, companies have changed, and capitalism has changed, but the trade unions have stayed the same, except they have lost all fighting spirit. These are the reasons why we are losing ground.
What kinds of developments in trade unions would attract youngsters?
The first thing would be ideology. The youth from plantation backgrounds need to identify with the working class. Even if they are not part of plantations anymore, they must understand how their parents were exploited and their own connection to this history.
They need to be mentored. Back in the day, we used to organize political classes where union members would learn about their identity and history, and the way plantation workers were exploited.
Today, we do not use the same terms, but we try to teach them about their community’s issues, how its history is connected to their exploitation, how it affects young people and future generations, and who is behind the exploitation. This is how we have tried to mentor young people from the plantations.
Second, capitalism has evolved. Employers' federations understand how it has changed, but trade unions have not. Even the negotiation process has changed. Everything is computerized. Employers’ federations will do a PowerPoint presentation, and a trade union leader will read from their pen and paper notes and say the same things.
The unions have to reflect this change in their organizing methods. For example, in the plantations, one of the main issues is the absence of toilets. In 2020, there are no toilets in the mountains.
Young people, even those who studied up to O- and A-levels, are plucking tea. These young people are not like my mother when she was working in the field. I don’t think she ever thought about not having a toilet. Everyone used the tea bushes and she did too. She did not think, “My dignity is challenged here”, and that her workplace rights were being violated.
But now the young female worker can’t go to the toilet in the tea bushes when male kanganis (male workers) are there. Even if there aren’t any male workers, she is not ready to go. This shows it is an issue of women's dignity. When we started a campaign for toilets, young people came out and led this campaign.
When people imagine the rural in South Asia, they do not think of plantations. How would you situate the plantation in rural South Asia?
In Tamil, we refer to the “rural” as kramam. Plantations are not included in this word.
In Sri Lanka, the country is divided into Gramasevaka (GS) divisions. Being a division gives a community the status of a village. Since the plantation system came from slavery, families stayed in single rooms. There was no separate GS division for them. They were not considered part of the rural.
Now, there is a GS for the plantation sector, but when the government announces a rural development programme, it never goes to the plantation sector. This is because they still see plantations as different from the rural.
“When you say rural, it is where marginalized and exploited people live, those who are isolated from the centre...Plantations need to come under the rural. ”
This is how the government interprets it. We can interpret it differently. We can connect it with class. Those who will nitpick might still say, “No, plantations are not rural”. But if you ask a different question, “Where are poor and working class people living?”, you can see plantations as rural.
When you say rural, it is where marginalized and exploited people live, those who are isolated from the centre. It is up to any organization which takes up development or political programs to interpret the rural in a different way, and how they would include the plantation sector.
Plantations need to come under the rural. Plantation workers are isolated, exploited, working class, and subordinated by the state.
Can you talk a little about the nationalization of plantations in Sri Lanka in the 1970s? What is its legacy and how did it shape the privatizations in 1992-3?
In Sri Lanka, the plantations have continued to rotate ownership – it has been a cycle of nationalization and privatization. In 1992-93, the state decided to privatize the plantations because they felt they were not making enough money. They gave them to 23 companies on long leases. The companies negotiated a collective agreement with the trade unions. The private companies could not implement their complete agenda immediately. They introduced premature retirement, but there was resistance to many other anti-worker measures.
Now, the collective agreement with the employers’ federation has collapsed. It had to be re-signed in October 2020, but the process continued to drag on because of the government. Government ministers promised workers a Rs. 1,000 wage to get votes, but after the election, they could not negotiate the higher wage with the employers' federation through the collective agreement. The pressure from the plantation workers increased, which led to the ministers getting the higher wage approved through the Wage Board, instead of the collective agreement. This led to the employers’ federation refusing to sign the collective agreement.
Since last year, employers are withholding dues owed to trade unions. There is a crisis in trade unions. Most of them are closing their offices. This has allowed employers to increase violations of workers’ rights. Our union understood this situation and we began to collect dues from union members directly.
Without the collective agreement, there is no agreed limit on how many kilos of tea per day the plantation workers need to pluck. According to the agreement, the unions and the superintendent collectively agree on how much each worker would pluck based on the weather and the state of the plants. The Rs. 1,000 wage on paper becomes Rs. 500 on the ground, because the unions have been weakened.
In the last five years, the employers have also been trying to informalize the plantation sector. Let me give you an example. In the Anselwatte Estate in the south, the plantation supervisors asked the workers to sign a paper, promising them that this would give them more land and autonomy over work.
The workers thought, “We get our own land and can work on our own schedule”, and just signed. Unfortunately, most of the workers in the estate cannot read and write. The paper they had signed actually said that they were losing their job and would be paid gratuity.
A few months later, the supervisors called the workers to come and collect the gratuity. Our union told them not to sign the gratuity form. We filed a case against the forced firing of workers.
It is like this all over the plantation sector in Sri Lanka. Permanent workers are being fired and replaced by informal workers. There is a big crackdown on workers. They are losing all the labour rights they have gained from earlier victories.
Plantation workers protesting for wage increase at the Abbotsleigh Estate. Image: World Socialist Website
On the other side, the income of government-owned estates is falling because they do not replant tea and are trying to introduce changes in the plantations. For example, in the Wattawala plantation, they have started a dairy farm in the estate. In other plantations, you will see palm oil being grown.
Other government-owned estates are now selling their land to poultry farms and to small farmers. In the Hanthana Estate, most of the land is already sold. When the land is sold, workers not only lose their jobs, but also their homes.
Trade unions must understand and resist this.
Why is it important for plantation workers’ unions to be led by women?
When the British were bringing plantation workers from India in the 1920s, they deliberately brought more women workers. Their idea was that men would challenge them, but women would keep quiet and work.
The trade unions maintained the same patriarchal structure of the plantations. This weakened them. You have an old male as the leader, but women workers as members.
Unions need to be representative. In a student union, a student must be the union president. It should be the same for trade unions.
Since there are more women in plantations, if you solve women workers’ issues, you solve the issues of the entire plantation sector. If you just solve male workers’ issues, you miss out on the problems faced by many workers.
A 1896 print advertisement for Ceylon Tea and India Tea. Image: periodpaper.com
Plantation workers in Sri Lanka only gained citizenship in the 2000s. Can you talk about why it took so long after independence and what its impact has been on plantation workers?
The word “independence” is making me laugh. These workers were brought from India as captive labour. They were not seen as citizens. They were always seen as “money-making machines”.
So, even after independence, they were not considered citizens. In 1964, the trade unions and left parties began to talk about the citizenship of plantation workers.
The Sri Lankan government negotiated the Sirima-Shastri Pact with the Indian government, which gave citizenship to some plantation workers and sent the rest back. They divided people this way.
“These workers were brought from India as captive labour. They were not seen as citizens. They were always seen as “money-making machines”.”
This was a really sad time. They separated families in this process, like you separate animals in a field. Some people hid, because they were here, their children were here, their life was here. The government was sending vans to take them away.
Plantation leaders talked about this issue a lot, but the government did not want to give citizenship for a political reason. They saw plantation workers as a different community, as a Tamil-speaking community, that might unite with the local Tamil minority and threaten the Sinhalese majority.
Practically, the absence of citizenship creates a lot of problems for plantation workers. It is difficult for them to get documents to get into schools and good jobs. The children couldn’t study, get jobs, travel, or do so many other things. They did not know which country they belonged to.
Eventually, the government realized that for parliamentary politics and elections, you need support from different ethnic minorities. There was also international pressure. In 2000, they gave citizenship to all plantation workers. Still, even now, there is racism towards Tamils from a plantation background. They are told that they have come from another country. It is the fourth generation, but people will still say, “You don’t belong to this country”.
Sirimavo Bandaranaike and Lal Bahadur Shastri signed the Sirima–Shastri Pact on 30 October 1964 to determine the status of people of Indian origin in Ceylon. Image: sirimavobandaranaike.org
What is the situation of debt in the plantation sector?
This is a big problem across Sri Lanka, especially because of microfinance-based credit. The interior plantations are less affected by microcredit programs, but estates which are closer to towns are highly affected because bank staff visit the estate workers' houses to give out loans.
The income of the plantation community is very low. We have historically not had many dealings with banks. This is changing, but even now, if you look at the interior plantation areas, 65 percent of plantation workers do not have bank accounts. Their wage does not go into bank accounts; it is given as cash.
This is why they do not take many loans from banks — but microcredit is growing there. The debt repayment burden is high. Lots of men who worked in Colombo have come back during COVID, but also before it, because there are no jobs. There are lots of mouths to feed.
Over the last five years, there have been cases of suicide because people could not repay loans. This is still happening. People come to your home to give you loans, and you don’t feel it is a big thing. Workers are used to this loan system, and they are suffering.
Could you tell us about your election as General Secretary of the Ceylon Plantation Workers’ Union?
I had told the union that women workers were not with them. They agreed to let me work on this issue. I was a field person. I went to the estates and took workers to negotiations. The union saw their membership begin to rise, and that women workers would come to my office.
This had an impact on the union elections. When the elections were held in 2013, I was elected as the first female General Secretary of a plantation trade union in Sri Lanka.
When I became General Secretary, it was difficult in the beginning. Everywhere, there were men. The superintendents were men. The labour department and the labour court were made up of all men. Sometimes, they even refused to see my face.
However, through my negotiation skills and my lack of fear, they accepted me as a union leader.
Can you talk a little bit about protests by plantation workers’ children in urban Sri Lanka and, in particular, how the plantations impact resistance and protest outside the plantation sector?
Plantation workers’ children have a difficult time getting jobs. Their schools are not good because resources are not shared with plantation schools. They are the last on the list.
Everyone in Sri Lanka sits for the same exams, and jobs are given according to the marks they receive. Here, the plantation children fare similarly to children from other rural areas.
However, plantation children have a specific disadvantage. They live in very isolated pockets and do not have many interactions with others.
When they go for job interviews, they have a tough time because they are not confident enough.
Moreover, they cannot use influence to get jobs, and there are stereotypes that plantation children cannot do work in the cities. This myth has always been there.
So, the plantation children don’t get work in either the plantations or the cities.
These children have begun to come together with the help of other organizations. They have raised a number of issues, including access to jobs, and getting addresses, quotas and separate teachers’ colleges for plantation children.
From time to time, they will hold protests in Hatton Town, Nuwaraeliya, or Kandy. They come to Colombo when they are ready to pressure the state.
Such a movement needs a structure, and supportive institutions, to continue. Plantation children have struggle in their blood. Strikes are normal growing up in plantations. It is about class. It will be good if plantation youth and rural youth can combine these protests.
Uda Rathalla Estate workers protesting against austerity measures. Image: World Socialist Website
What are the lessons those looking to organize agricultural workers and landless populations in South Asia can learn from the plantation workers’ struggles in Sri Lanka?
The first lesson is that class struggle will connect people. It is important to organize and build understanding based on this.
One example is the protests we organized in the Airpot Estate. Sri Lanka has a lot of sensitivities around ethnicity. We were able to bring together Sinhala- and Tamil-speaking workers on the basis of class. We even had garment workers from the Muslim community.
Class can bring ethnicity, language and religion under one umbrella – whether it is a land or wage issue.
The second lesson is the importance of collective leadership. The model of one leader will not work. Instead, we need shared and collective leadership, with male and female leaders. The leadership also needs to reflect the people we are organizing.
Unions must represent people. We must also mentor workers, but it is important to understand their situation and touch their hearts.
The plantation has been at the heart of global commodity chains from the colonial period, extending across the Caribbean, North and South America, West Africa, South and Southeast Asia. Have there been attempts to bring struggles on plantations together on a united platform?
There is a need to come together, and we have already started dialogues with plantation struggles in India, Nepal and Bangladesh. There is also a great struggle going on in Malaysia.
The same things are happening everywhere, but everyone is using different strategies. The world is connected now and, unless we get together, it is difficult to fight in India or Sri Lanka alone to get workers’ rights back.
It is also important to bring the rural and the plantation struggles together.
We also need to come together regionally and internationally. One of our mistakes is that we keep working within Sri Lanka.
When the employers’ federation refused to sign the collective agreement, we needed to lobby the parent companies and find people and countries that would stand with us in solidarity. It can be easier to pressure the employers’ federation from outside.
If you had a blank slate, what would be the future of plantations? Abolition, nationalization, or workers control?
The ideal solution would be for workers to take over plantations.
We need to think about it again, because it is going in the other direction right now. Workers are being separated from the land and the product.
It is possible for us to do this. But can the current trade unions do it? No.
It is very rare for unions to think in this way. Some union leaders sign agreements with ministers. If the focus is on how to make money from plantations and how to win elections, you cannot do this.
We need to think about strategies that can make worker-controlled plantations a possibility.
Hashim bin Rashid is a doctoral candidate at SOAS. He has worked as a journalist and teacher in Pakistan as well as being part of progressive activism.
Shafiya Rafaithu is arecent graduate from the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. She is currently employed as an Independent Researcher.