People have been enjoying the refreshing, health-giving qualities of tea for over four thousand years. Today, tea is one of the most widely consumed drinks in the world, second only to water. Two billion cups of tea are consumed globally every day.

In India, over 850 million people and nine out of every ten households consume tea daily. In markets such as the UK, consumers drink some 165 million cups of tea a day – enough to fill 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Assam tea is particularly valued by consumers for its rich, robust and aromatic flavour. Like champagne, Assam tea is named for the region where it is grown: the lush, humid plains of the Brahmaputra River valley in North-East India. Often, supermarkets sell it at premium prices, either as pure Assam tea or as part of popular blends such as ‘English Breakfast’ tea.

Building on the findings of a series of reports by local non-government organizations and international media outlets, new research commissioned by Oxfam and undertaken by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) on 50 tea estates shows the shocking scale and depth of human suffering of the women and men that produce our tea.

The new research finds that the workers who bring us this prized brew struggle to earn enough to cover their basic living costs, to find drinking water that will not give them typhoid or cholera, to reach a medical facility in time to treat illnesses, or to find shelter from the monsoon rains under the dilapidated roofs of their cramped houses.

Researchers interviewed 510 workers on 50 Assam tea estates that supply to tea brands and supermarkets internationally, revealing appalling working and living conditions that constitute a failure to respect, protect and fulfil international human and labour rights.

These findings include:

• Poverty wages that are below the minimum wage for Assam’s unskilled agricultural workers. Half of households interviewed receive government ‘below poverty line’ ration cards. A third experience recurrent debt. Lack of promotion opportunities means that some workers have remained on the same pay grade for 15–20 years.

• Injustice for women. Oxfam-commissioned research shows that including unpaid domestic work, women tea workers undertake up to 13 hours of physical labour per day after just six hours’ rest. They do the labour-intensive, low-paid task of plucking tea, while men get the better paid, more respected factory jobs. They are excluded from decision making and from pay and working conditions negotiations, partly due to being under-represented in trade unions. These add up to a working life deprived of dignity.

• Lack of basic healthcare, education, housing, food and sanitation entitlements. Housing and toilets are dilapidated or non-existent. Most workers do not have access to safe drinking water, so despite doctors’ warnings they have no choice but to drink the contaminated water, meaning diseases such as cholera and typhoid are common. Indian tea estates are legally obliged to provide decent housing, healthcare, education and working conditions – but are clearly failing to do so.

As explained in Oxfam’s Ripe for Change report, the root cause of exploitation in food supply chains is a marked and widening inequality of power. At the top, big supermarkets and other corporate giants dominate food markets, allowing them to squeeze ever more value from supply chains that span the globe, while at the bottom, the bargaining power of small-scale farmers and workers such as those in Assam has been steadily eroded.

A lack of transparency regarding where supermarkets source their tea only worsens the challenges facing workers, as consumers are generally unaware of the conditions in which the people who pluck and produce our tea products are forced to live, and the problems that they face might appear remote and distant.

Several international studies and campaigns have illustrated the importance of tea brands and consumers in foreign markets to improving the working conditions of Assam’s tea workers, although little attention has been placed on the Indian domestic market. However, industry insiders estimate that 80% of tea produced in Assam is consumed domestically in India.

New estimates, commissioned by Oxfam and undertaken by the Bureau for the Appraisal of Social Impacts for Citizen Information (BASIC), show that supermarkets and tea brands in India retain more than half (58.2%) of the final consumer price of black processed tea sold in the country, with just 7.2% remaining for workers (using plucking costs as a proxy indicator of labour costs).

Therefore, for a typically sized pack of branded black tea sold in India priced at INR 68.8 ($1.06) for 200g, supermarkets and tea brands would retain some INR 40.4 ($0.61) while workers would collectively receive just INR 4.95 ($0.08) per pack.

These trends are replicated in export markets:

• In the United States, supermarkets and tea brands are estimated to receive 93.8% of the final consumer price for bagged black tea sold in the country, while labour costs to pay workers represents just 0.8% of the final price.

• In Germany, supermarkets and tea brands are estimated to receive 86.5% of the final consumer price for bagged black tea sold in the country, while labour costs to pay workers represent just 1.4% of the final price.

• In the Netherlands, supermarkets and tea brands are estimated to receive 83.7% of the final consumer price for bagged black tea sold in the country, while labour costs to pay workers represent just 2.9% of the final price.

• In the United Kingdom, supermarkets and tea brands are estimated to receive 66.8% of the final consumer price for bagged black tea sold in the country, while labour costs to pay workers represent just 4% of the final price.

The relentless squeeze by supermarkets and brands on the share of the end consumer price for tea makes poverty and hardship for workers in Assam more likely. But, combined with rising costs and the impacts of the climate crisis, it is also contributing to a severe economic crisis for the entire Indian tea industry – with several tea estates in West Bengal and Assam either closing or facing the threat of closure.

The causal factors behind the human suffering faced by tea workers in Assam include a historical legacy of injustice and deep inequalities of power. These inequalities exist between workers on the one hand and tea brands and consumption outlets such as supermarkets on the other – who are able to squeeze prices and push risks down the supply chain.

However, the Oxfam-commissioned research shows that a living wage could be within reach for workers on Assam tea plantations. Workers on tea estates in Assam currently receive the equivalent of just $0.04 (€0.03) per 100g of bagged black tea sold to consumers but would require the equivalent of only $0.10 (€0.09) to enable a living wage to be paid.

Oxfam is calling on those with a stake in the industry not to abandon the millions of workers who are dependent on it. Tea estate closures in West Bengal have been associated with extreme suffering and even starvation, and this should be avoided in Assam at all costs.

The problems highlighted in this report are not exclusive to Assam – they are endemic throughout the tea industry and beyond. But they are particularly acute in Assam. Tea brands and supermarkets should work with trade unions, civil society, producers and the relevant government bodies to address the systemic challenges facing the industry and end the human suffering of the millions of workers who depend on tea for their livelihood, not turn their backs on them.

Accordingly, we call for urgent action from supermarkets, tea brands and state authorities to end the human suffering of Assam’s tea workers, and support a life of dignified work by:

• Committing to support a living wage for workers and ensuring the commitment is actioned.
• Ensuring that women workers have a voice in decision making and can work in decent conditions without discrimination.
• Improving transparency for consumers around where their tea (including Assam tea) comes from and how much is paid for it at each stage of the supply chain.
• Ensuring that tea estates comply with their legal obligation to provide decent housing, healthcare, and education under the Plantations Labour Act (PLA), 1951.

 

To read the full report, please click here.

 

 

 

Oxfam International is a global movement of people who are fighting inequality to end poverty and injustice.