PLC meet today to settle disputes

Kochi: The Plantation Labour Committee, the institutional mechanism formed to settle disputes in the plantation sector, is meeting in Thiruvananthapuram on Saturday to address the demand of the workers for higher wages amid hardening of stands by the planters and the women workers’ movement that led the successful bonus strike two weeks ago.

Representatives of the three recognised trade unions –INTUC, CITU and AITUC—and Association of Planters of Kerala (APK), the organisation of planters, will attend the meet, in which Labour Minister Shibu Baby John is also expected to be present.

It is understood that five representatives of Ponpilai Orumai, the women workers movement that overruled trade unions and launched an agitation for higher bonus and wages, have left for Thiruvananthapuram to make themselves heard. They have declared that they will launch a strike if the PLC failed to decide the daily wages to '500 from the present '232. The APK, on the other hand, has expressed its inability to meet the demand. “We are in no position to meet their demand,” said APK president C Vinayaraghavan. “We will have to take legal recourse if the state government takes a unilateral decision to hike the wages that are beyond our means,” he told Deccan Chronicle. “We are not in a position to face an employee strike either. It’s harvest season now. Some plantations have already lost several days of harvest. Another strike would be disastrous.”

Ponpilai Orumai representatives have, however, refused to buy that argument. “The planters talk of losses only when it comes to the wages of the workers,” said Lissy Sunny, one of the leaders of the movement. “We have explained in detail to the minister and the authorities in the last round of talks that the accounts the company had forwarded to them do not reflect the truth.” The planters are now talking of imposing lock-outs, but such threats cannot cow them down, she said.