Factors Affecting Industrial Relations in Indian Tea Industry:A Study on the North Bengal Region of West Bengal

The tea industry of north Bengal in West Bengal is unique on its character from the other tea producing regions in India. Tea is grown mainly in three regions in north Bengal — the Darjeeling hill region, the Terai region, and the Dooars. As per the latest report (2016-17) published by the Tea Board of India (TBI), north Bengal alone produced 358.53 million kg of made tea where total production of India is1250.49 m. kg . The north Bengal tea producing region comprises of 276 set tea estates and the economy of this region mainly depends directly or indirectly on tea industry.

Many tea estates located in the north Bengal region have failed to fulfill their statutory obligations of labor welfare as stipulated by the Plantation Act, 1951 creating fear psychosis in the mind of the workers. Labors have been started various kind of agitation and movement in order put pressure on the representative of management for securing those benefits those have prescribed by the Act. As a consequence, the labor-management relations which is properly known as industrial relations have been seriously affected. This deteriorating industrial relations have ultimately affected the moral of tea workers which in turn has affected the overall productivity as well as profitability of the industry.

In this study an attempt has been made to identify the most significant factors which lead to the poor industrial relations in the tea industry of north Bengal. The required data has been gathered with the help of suitable questionnaire and the data has been analyzed with the help of the SPSS software. Further, based on the analyses a valid conclusions and recommendations have been made.