BBC uncovers dangerous conditions and child labor in India’s tea industry
An investigation by BBC News has found instances of dangerous working conditions and child labor practices on tea estates in India.
BBC reporters investigating the tea industry in the state of Assam, in the north-east of the country, found workers living with poor sanitation, no electricity or running water, and inadequate protection from the pesticides used in their jobs.
The reporters also found children in their early teens working full-time on some of the estates, in contravention of UN policy and Indian child labor laws.
The BBC reports that tea workers in India are typically paid less than the minimum wage, as housing is provided as part of their remuneration. The combination of poor living conditions and low wages frequently causes malnourishment and disease.
The tea estates investigated by the BBC supply several leading retail brands, including Lipton, Tetley, Twinings, and PG Tips. The Rainforest Alliance NGO, which certifies ethical practices and whose seal of approval the tea brands carry, conceded the investigation revealed flaws in its auditing process.
IZA World of Labor author Eric Edmonds has written about the effect of minimum working age regulations on child labor. Noting that such regulations have had little effect on the extent of child labor, he argues that: “Going forward, coordinating compulsory schooling laws and minimum age of employment regulations may help maximize the joint influence of these regulations on child time allocation, but these regulations should not be the focus of the global fight against child labor.”
Elsewhere, Haroon Bhorat has written for us about compliance with minimum wage laws in developing countries. He writes that: “Enforcement has not kept up with growth in regulations to protect workers from low wages and poor working conditions. Several institutional structures shape enforcement, including the role of labor inspectors and approaches to compliance, and these and other variables can be analyzed to explore their effects on the level of minimum wage violations.”
Read the BBC News report here.
Related articles:
Does minimum age of employment regulation reduce child labor? by Eric V. Edmonds
Compliance with minimum wage laws in developing countries by Haroon Bhorat
Designing labor market regulations in developing countries by Gordon Betcherman
Does increasing the minimum wage reduce poverty in developing countries? by T. H. Gindling