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Abroad

Veteran Member
The owner of the Sonali tea estate in West Bengal was dragged out of talks on the payment of arrears. He died after being beaten up and stabbed by a crowd.

Police say the owner had come to pacify angry workers who had reportedly not been paid for two or three months.

[...]

Several incidents of attacks on tea executives by workers have been reported in recent years.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-30167195
 
Police say the owner had come to pacify angry workers who had reportedly not been paid for two or three months.

An honest days labor deserves an honest days pay. Besides the shitty working conditions... Can't expect people to work in a factory without pay.
Now the owner is dead and everyone is unemployed.
 
I have to say, if I had.....
.... come to pacify angry workers who had reportedly not been paid ....

....., I reckon I would have brought money with me? :shrug:

I wonder what reason he was claiming for why the wages were not being paid?
 
I wonder what reason he was claiming for why the wages were not being paid?

The reason for the anger is nullified when the workers go on a killing rampage. If there was an issue with unpaid wages, take it to court en masse. If that's no remedy, quit!
 
The reason for the anger is nullified when the workers go on a killing rampage. If there was an issue with unpaid wages, take it to court en masse. If that's no remedy, quit!

Poor people do not sue rich people in India, - or at least they would expect nothing to come of it for years and years.

Looks to me as though the representative from management seriously underestimated how desperate the workers were.
 
Looks more like the workers are uncivilized murderers at heart, still not an excuse.

I shan't be surprised to learn that they were little better than serfs and have nowhere to live if they quit their current employ. Treat people like dumb brutes and they are likely to behave as such.
 
An honest days labor deserves an honest days pay. Besides the shitty working conditions... Can't expect people to work in a factory without pay.
Now the owner is dead and everyone is unemployed.
the workers are treated like chattel slaves and are living at a level of poverty most people here couldn't understand. They have families to feed and maybe try to cloth if these factory and plantation owners were fairer to them this wouldn't have happened. Don't forget the brick factory owner that wouldn't let the couple leave as he had a lean on their poverty wages and they were beaten tortured and burned to death by douchebags that had claimed they had committed blasphemy
 
I'm positive these workers were in crisis financially after not being paid for so long...meaning their wives and children were in crisis also. It takes money to buy food and items kids need as well as adults. Everyone has bills to pay. I'm not saying what they did was the right way to handle it...but I say they gave this man two to three months of honest hard work and he should have paid them. I understand where the anger and rage came from. Broken promises...suffering loved ones.
 
I know that. They have a court system, too. However bad it may be to Western standards, it's the only game in town.

Do they even let people from the lower castes sue those from the uppers?

And it wasn't the only game in town, there's also taking the law into your own hands.

America went to war over taxes. I see nothing wrong with these poor people doing the same over their very livelihoods.
 
They weren't getting paid before either. It's very likely that the plantation could be remote, and these people and their families live there on the plantation. No pay? Now you owe the company store for anything you had to get on credit. They can't leave owing, they are obligated to repay the company for the debt the company forced them into, and you can bet that suit would move through court in the blink of an eye. Makes me think of conditions here that led to labor organizations.

"Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store"

Sung by Tennessee Ernie Ford
 
Everyone has bills to pay. I'm not saying what they did was the right way to handle it...but I say they gave this man two to three months of honest hard work and he should have paid them.

I completely agree that they had a very good reason to be enraged, I just don't condone how they handled it.
 
Just for the record, I deplore the violence as much as anybody; but reading more about the circumstances, I cannot say I am particularly surprised:


Sonali TE is a small garden of about 426 acres, 40km from Malbazar on the way to Siliguri. It has a long history of trouble and was shut for some time. There was also some dispute over ownership and nobody seems to know when Jhunjhunwala, who also goes by the name Rajesh Agarwal, took over, say sources. According to records, the garden produced nearly 1.63 lakh kg tea leaves in 2010. It has no factory of its own and sells leaves to larger tea estates.

Workers had not been paid for six months, say sources. "From what we have gathered, garden workers were agitating since early morning and gheraoed the management for their arrears. In the afternoon, Jhunjhunwala, who lives in Malbazar, arrived and started negotiating with workers. There were heated exchanges after which somebody dragged him to a spot in front of the office, where he was murdered," said an officer.

"Workers say they have not been paid for months. The management hasn't even deposited their provident fund share or supplied rations or firewood to the workers. Details are sketchy as the tea estate was a proprietorship and Jhunjhunwala wasn't a member of any association of tea planters. Some workers have also alleged that the management was trying to evict them from the 'coolie lines' to extend the garden," a source said.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...owner-in-West-Bengal/articleshow/45244729.cms


Rajesh Jhunjhunwala, also known as Rajesh Agarwal, is said to have met with workers from the Sonali Tea Estate near Bagrakote following a long-running dispute over pay and conditions that had led to some labourers staging a dharna, or non-violent sit-in.

Tea plantation sources said Jhunjhunwala had not been a member of the local Planters' Association for some two years and apparently large parts of the land were now being used for other activities rather than tea production.

It is not known when Jhunjhunwala took over ownership of the troubled estate, but some sources said workers had not been paid for six months.

India is the world's second-largest producer of tea after China, but workers are notoriously badly-paid and often live in squalid conditions. On average workers receive around 50 rupees ($1) a day, plus some help with rent and fuel.

In recent months many plantations have closed their doors, leaving workers with no income. Around 100 workers are said to have starved to death in the last year.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/india-tea-...on-boss-death-row-over-pay-conditions-1476195



Police were also searching the neighbouring villages as the culprits fled after the incident at the estate, which is spread over some 400 acres (161 hectares) of land in the Dooars region, he added

Tea workers are notoriously badly paid and often housed in poor accommodation in remote areas. They are given little protection by police and cannot take advantage of laws designed to guarantee them health care and fair working conditions, rights groups say.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/af...tml?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490
 
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Working six months without pay is a long time. How horrific their living circumstances must have been. It was just a matter of time. It sounds like the workers initially handled things the right way with "sit in's". Apparently when the boss started "negotiations"...they weren't fair negotiations and these folks reacted.
 
Having seen REAL poverty in the townships of South Africa in the 1980's I can completely understand why this revolt happened. It is tragic that they won't receive their pay ever now, but something had to be done and this was the only way they could stop this evil bastard from doing this to themselves and others in the future.

LOL "It's tragic that they won't receive their pay ever now." Wow I normally like to play Mr. Empathetic but I LOVED that comment and in turn now love you. Maybe it's because I have more empathy towards hundreds of people working hard to support their families on what are already crap wages than some rich factory owner that probably continues to treat his own family to lavish luxuries while starving hundreds if not thousands of others.
 
The reason for the anger is nullified when the workers go on a killing rampage. If there was an issue with unpaid wages, take it to court en masse. If that's no remedy, quit!

Lol now I know how you became a Certified Unicorn Hunter. You clearly live in a fairy tale lol.
 
I had a feeling when I read they'd continued working, and waited 2-6 mos. for non-violent resolution of their wage/labor grievances before a Dharna (peaceful protest) was sanctioned, they were likely Hindu. This brings up some very interesting food for thought.

While the Indian Supreme Court states "Captital Punishment" (sanctioned, justfiable murder) should "only be used in the rarest of cases," the Hindi themselves subscribe to "absolute non-violence." (Note: Had they been non-Hindi, Muslim or Christian, for example, the other two Indian faith groups, they likely wouldn't have waited then employed a Dharna).

Very much like Buddhist Law (Dhammapada 129-32), Hindu Law states: "He who commits murder must be considered as the worst offender, more wicked than a defamer, than a thief, and than he who injures with a staff." - Laws of Manu 8.345

Even the Islamic Qu'ran states: "If anyone killed a person not in retaliation for murder or to spread mischief in the land, it would be as if he killed all of mankind." - Surah Al-Maaida 5.32 (however, in Islam, the owner could have certainly been accused of "spreading mischief.").

By the workers using a Dharna, they were not only imposing a "sit-in" (cessation of work), a Dharna also includes a "fast," therefore, they were not eating any food of any kind during the protest period.

Hindi tradition is deeply ingrained in Indian culture for its adherents, and with reincarnation based on "good karma" and "bad karma" being the life's challenge, they literally put their current lives, their souls, and their "next" lifetime on the line to commit this murder. They were not even "Mahatmas," or Holy Men, just ordinary, dirt poor, low-caste workers who, according to Hindu, were already here to "work off bad karma" incurred in their previous lives; thus their poverty/position in life.

So, their families welfare aside, the question becomes, at what point (incl. the effects of physical starvation) do people become willing to give up their religion, their lives, their souls, and their next lifetimes in favor of the human instinct to survive? Is there *any* point in the human condition where what we call murder might be warranted?

Edit: I was writing while others were posting. For the record, I understand exactly where @Wolf_of_Mars is coming from.
 
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