Beyond the unions: The Pembillai Orumai women's strike in the south Indian tea belt

Abstract

AbstractThe article examines an extraordinary wildcat strike led by women tea workers against a giant tea plantation company and dominant trade unions in the south Indian tea belt of Munnar. It employs situational analysis to examine the larger processes that led to the strike, implications for the workers, and to the wider socio‐economic relations in the tea belt. It is argued here that in addition to the exploitative plantation production and the poor implementation of welfare measures, the strike was largely fuelled by and directed against union corruption and the breach by union leaders of egalitarian relations in the workers' society. At the end, the article calls for an understanding of local conceptions of inequality, injustice, and humiliation as forces that have the potency to initiate and intensify labour resistance under exploitative production relations.