“ON

CHAPTER XXI, .
Committee and the figures for later years are based, do not give a true
percentage of absenteeism, and they have supplied us with figures for a
number of gardens throughout the year. These show for the selected
gardens in 1929 an average attendance of about 699, in the
Assam Valley and about 749, in the Surma Valley. Similar
figures for previous years are not available, and the constancy of the
published figures for September and March makes it unlikely that there
have been substantial changes inthe percentages attending at other
seasons. In considering the extent of absenteeism in the Assam tea
gardens, it is important to bear in mind the subsidiary occupations of
the garden worker. The most important is private cultivation, but
household duties in agricultural surroundings, such as the purchases of
weekly supplies from the market, the collection of firewood, the grazing
of cattle, the threshing of corn, ete., make a considerable demand on the
workers’ time and particularly on that of the women. Absenteeism is,
therefore, to some extent inevitable.
Effect of Increase of Wages.

In Assam, as elsewhere, we met the allegation that the worker
does not respond to an increase in wages and that, instead of raising his
standard of living, he is content to do less work if he can earn enough for
his bare subsistence. We have already dealt with this doctrine in the
case of industrial workers, and what is said in Chapter XII on this sub-
ject is equally relevant in connection with plantation workers in Assam.
There is ample evidence that the worker is steadily increasing his day to
day wants. Despite his illiteracy, lack of organisation and geographical
isolation, he has improved his standard of living in the last ten years
and the plantation bazaars show the tendency of the luxuries of yester-
day to become the necessities of to-day. Such evidence cannot be
reconciled with the doctrine that there isa fixed subsistence level with
which the worker is content.
Methods of Determining Wage Rates in Assam.

Our survey of the position in Assam has convinced us that the
establishment of wage-fixing machinery for the tea industry,if practic-
able, is desirable. It has also given us reasons for believing that, if
proper methods are adopted, a practicable scheme to this end can, in
fact, be devised. We deal with the question of the desirability of estab-
lishing such machinery from the point of view first of the worker and then
of the industry. Thereafter we deal with certain objections to the idea, and
we go on to outline the procedure and methods which appear to us most
likely to lead to a successful issue.
An important feature which emerges from the survey is the
inequality of the bargaining power of the two parties to the wage agree-
ment. As we have shown, there are powerful organisations of employers.
As a rule, these have an understanding that the actual rates of wages
shall not be increased without notifying their Association, a practice to
which resort is seldom made. In effect thismeans that wage rates are