Photo: 8 workers remanded on criminal charges.

Alton Estate Workers Support Fund

We are crowdfunding to raise financial support for forty-two tea plantation workers at Alton Estate, Maskeliya, Sri Lanka whose employment has been summarily terminated by the estate management and have been charged with criminal offences in the Courts at the instigation of management.

Following a violent physical attack on workers on 5 February 2021 by the Alton Estate managers a tense situation developed on the estate. This was over a dispute about the one-day strike action called by the plantation unions, in support of the Rs.1000 daily wage demand across the plantation sector. During the altercation two workers were injured and hospitalised with the injured woman’s shoulder being dislocated. Over seven hundred workers went on strike in solidarity with the injured workers. Management rejected all attempts at negotiation towards dispute resolution. Instead it insisted that the workers come to talk to them at their residence, where the women workers were subjected to deplorable abuse, and which ended in an allegedly violent confrontation. On 18 February seven women and one man were remanded in custody for twenty-one days in prison. and were eventually bailed out after legal intervention. The police at the instigation of the Alton management keep on adding more and more persons to the suspects list, and are producing them in court to be charged, and the number of suspects has now risen to forty-two.

The workers have put up with a catalogue of abusive practices from management in recent times such as physical and verbal assault, unlawful slashing of pay, delayed payments of salary, threats, intimidation using the police, mounting of false criminal cases against workers, evictions from the estate and many more. The workers have demanded a change in management.

However, the plantation unions have not been able to bring the Alton management to the table to discuss this and other related demands. On strike for nearly two months, the workers were forced to return to work, simply to survive.

Thirty-six workers who were allegedly present at the scene of the conflict at the manager’s residence have now had their employment terminated. This means that they are also being denied the meagre welfare provisions that they are entitled to on the estate and this will negatively impact on their employment provident fund provisions when they are old and unable to work. The plantation proper has been declared a restricted area for these workers who live on the edges of the plantation.

The workers who have had their employment terminated have families with infant, disabled and school-going children who are sitting for national examinations, and who cannot go to school as they cannot meet the travel costs. These families cannot access the estate’s medical dispensary even for an emergency.

The workers feel very demoralised as the expected support from the unions has not been forthcoming, and the plantation sector unions, which are also political parties now, stand in elections and the main union is part of the current government, and do not offer even the most meagre subsistence support for those who have lost their jobs. The unions have not supported the workers with their legal fees to fight the criminal charges against them.

Alton Estate produces some of the best tea in the world, and plantation workers in Sri Lanka who earn a very large portion of the country ‘s annual income are the most exploited workers in the country from colonial times. Alton Estate workers need urgent financial support to fight their criminal cases and for their livelihoods.

They need your support!

Thank you.

Photos courtesy of the Hill Country mass organisation for social justice.