History · Society · 9 min read

Pembilai Orumai: The Women Who Stopped Munnar in 2015

In September 2015, thousands of women tea workers walked off the estates of Munnar, shut out the trade unions and the politicians, and sat on the main road of the town for nine days. Their movement, Pembilai Orumai, or 'Women's Unity', became one of the most remarkable labour protests in modern Kerala.

By GK Global, Adimali, Munnar · Trails & Tales by GK

In early September 2015, visitors arriving in Munnar found the town at a standstill. On the main road, outside the offices of the Kannan Devan Hills Plantations Company (KDHP), thousands of women sat in the sun and rain, day after day. Most were tea pluckers, many of them Tamil-speaking Dalit women whose families had worked on the estates for generations. They had no union banners, and they would not let union leaders or politicians speak for them. They called themselves Pembilai Orumai, "Women's Unity".

The background

The tea estates of Munnar have been worked for more than a century by families brought from the Tamil country. (Read the story of Munnar's tea workers.) In 2005, Tata Tea transferred most of its Munnar estates to the Kannan Devan Hills Plantations Company, in which the workers themselves became shareholders, and which was described as one of the largest employee-owned companies in the world. (Read our history of Munnar.)

Yet for the women who plucked the tea, little seemed to have changed. Their daily wage was around Rs 232, far below the wage for other manual work in Kerala. They lived in one-room "line houses" owned by the company, which they would have to leave when they retired. Women made up the majority of the workforce, did the hardest field work, and yet the trade unions that bargained on their behalf were led by men. Many workers felt that the unions had grown too close to the management.

In August 2015, the company announced that because profits had fallen, the annual bonus would be cut to 10%, from about 20% the year before.

Nine days on the road

In early September, the women stopped work and marched into Munnar town. They sat on the road outside the KDHP office, blocking traffic on the main highway. When leaders of the big trade unions, the AITUC, INTUC and CITU, came to address them, the women turned them away. Local politicians were sent off too. "We pluck the tea leaves, you pluck our lives," went one of their slogans.

The protest was organised by the women themselves, through networks of friends, neighbours and co-workers on the estates. Among the faces who became known across Kerala were Lissy Sunny and Gomathy Augustine. The protest drew huge public attention and support; tourists were stranded, and television crews camped in the town.

On 13 September 2015, after talks in Kochi in which Chief Minister Oommen Chandy took part, the company agreed to pay a total of 20%: a bonus of 8.33% and an ex-gratia payment of 11.67%. The women ended their protest, but warned that they would return if their wage demand was not met.

After the strike

The protest set off similar actions by plantation workers in other parts of Kerala, including Harrisons Malayalam estates in Idukki and Wayanad. Negotiations on wages through the state's Plantation Labour Committee followed later in 2015, and the daily wage was raised, though not to the Rs 500 the women had demanded. Pembilai Orumai went on to field candidates in local elections, a rare entry of plantation women into electoral politics. Over time the movement split and lost some of its force, but its example endured.

Today, a decade later, workers in Munnar's tea estates earn around Rs 500 to 550 a day, and many of the issues raised in 2015, especially housing and land for retired workers, remain unresolved.

Why it mattered

The Munnar strike of 2015 was remarkable for several reasons. It was led by women, in a sector where women did most of the work but had little voice. It was led by some of the most marginalised people in Kerala: Tamil-speaking Dalit workers living on company land. And it challenged not only the employer but the trade unions and political parties that claimed to represent them. Scholars and commentators across India saw it as a turning point in the politics of plantation labour.

For visitors who admire the neatly clipped tea gardens of Munnar, the story of Pembilai Orumai is a reminder of the people whose labour makes the landscape. (Read also our guide to Munnar tea.)