A strike in majority of tea gardens across West Bengal's Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri, and Alipurduar districts today called by a joint forum of 23 unions to press for their demand of wage revision, affected functioning of the gardens.
Twenty-three trade unions under a common platform - United Trade Union Congress (UTUC) - had called a 48-hour strike which began this morning, a day after a BJP sponsored 12-hour strike at Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar over the same issue of wage revision of tea garden workers.
The Trinamool Congress-led trade union INTTUC did not participate in the strike. The Gorkha Jammukti Morcha, which took part in today's strike, would not support tomorrow's call for a general strike.
The UTUC leadership claimed that nearly four lakh tea garden workers today participated in the strike and termed it a "huge success".
"Today's complete shut down of the tea gardens in the Dooars and Terai regions has shown how genuine our demand of wage revision is.
"We hope that people will support us in tomorrow's general strike across," said UTUC leader Nirmal Das.
The wage hike demand in tune with the prevalent inflation rates has been pending for the past six months and was shelved ahead of the festive season in September after a deadlock over revision of workers' wages from Rs 95 a day now.
"Over 95 per cent tea gardens across the region were shut today. The planters as well as the state government have to understand that the workers' demand of wage revision is a just one and can't be shelved forever," said UTUC leader and former MP Manohar Tirkey.
In the mean time, a meeting between the labour commissioner and trade unions has been convened on November 17 at Uttarkanya, the secretariat of North Bengal, followed by another round of tripartite meeting between the government, unions and representatives of the planters on November 22 and 23 to settle the wage dispute.
Five such tripartite meetings over the issue have remained inconclusive so far.
