Report of the Royal Commission on Labour in India

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1850495947

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-233603

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Report of the Royal Commission on Labour in India

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: His Majesty's Stationery Off.

Year of publication:: 1931

Scope:: xviii, 580 S.; graph. Darst., Kt.

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter XXI. - Wages on planatations

Collection:: Economics Books

“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

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