Contextualizing Tea in Bangladesh

Origins in Colonialism

Tea, or Camellia sinensis L., production in Bangladesh began under British colonial rule and has continued today after their independence in 1971.^[1] The East India Company established themselves in Bangladesh, bringing with them the tea plants from China. Tea production also began in Bangladesh in Chittagong in 1840. Rather than working with the Bengali people, the British brought with them plans for labor recruitment and labor structure. The British would select managers and assistant managers from around the plantation area, and use them to recruit laborers from elsewhere. Those who lived closest to the plantations did not want to change their lives as self employed farmers or fishermen. The British manipulated people from Uttar Pradesh, Madras and West Bengal who were poor and illiterate. Their civil rights were stripped when they signed on as tea laborers, meaning that the East India Company could report anyone to the police who tried to flee or did not work hard enough. Tea laborers, men and women, were paid a wage barely enough to buy bread, often paid with coinage only usable within the plantation. This quickly evolved into “state sponsored socio-economic conditions” continuing to today, controlling laborers by restricting their movements and options through coercion and threats.^[2] The colonial manager-laborer relationship persists and affects how workers are treated.

Land and Labor in the Tea Sector

As of 2022, Bangladesh ranks 12th among tea producing countries in the world and 3rd in consumption. There are currently approximately 166 tea plantations in Bangladesh, and 135 of which were created under colonial rule, based on indentured labor.^[3] Tea production in Bangladesh has had a steady increase in the last 20 years approximately.^[4] Hossan et al. examined trends in land use in intervals from 2004 to 2013 to 2022. A map of Bangladesh was created for each year and mapped the land use as one of six categories: “agriculture, tea cultivation area, settlement, waterbody, bare land, and forest.”^[5] Analyzing for land transformation, researchers found that tea cultivation areas decreased between 2004 and 2013, and then creased in 2013 to 2022. This resulted in an overall increase by 41.08%, with bare land and forest being the most transformed categories into tea plantations. As far as trade development goes, this shows the growth and resiliency of the sector in Bangladesh. However, in terms of land use, the authors call on policymakers to provide safeguards for croplands and other land use types. Environmentally there is value in a diverse landscape, and the tea sector cannot exponentially transform land.

Labor conditions in Bangladesh directly relate to this growth in the tea sector, with plantation workplaces reducing in both safety and proper compensation. These plantations follow precedent set by colonialism, perpetuating the same systemic violence against tea plantation workers.

While Hosan et al. evaluate Bangladesh’s change in land use over ten years, they do not discuss the previous owners, and if any instances were examples of land grabbing. Khan and Lasslett analyze community resistance in Bangladesh against land grabs, instead seeing how tea workers successfully stopped the state from confiscating land.^[6] In the case study, tea plantation workers resisted Duncan Brothers (Bangladesh), a UK owned tea production company, from gaining tenure over 512 acres that had previously been used by the workers to grow crops to feed themselves. In 2014, a newspaper article alerted the workers to this potential. They quickly mobilized and created a committee consisting of them and the workers from 23 neighboring gardens or plantations. The participants called this a movement: scheduled strikes during part of the workday everyday, visible sit ins, continuous petitions to legislators, educational/cultural events about working conditions, and more. This resulted in the successful resistance against this land grab. Marginalized communities like tea plantation workers are able to resist owner and state powers when they can rely on sustained force when the numbers, determination, and political confidence are in their favor. This mobilization of tea workers operated entirely within the workers themselves, and did not go through any union route. Self motivated resistance was successful, but only because of the large, diverse, and sustained effort.

Labor Conditions

These workers are typically excluded outside of their economic mistreatment because of their ethnic and caste identities, further pushing them to the margins. Tribal castes have been the sole tea laborers for the last five generations at least, and reliance on a single labor source is causing a shortage. Low literacy rates coupled with geographic isolation only exacerbates this separation from dominant socio-cultural networks once again leaving them out of political decision making that directly affects their daily lives. This is “a continuation of colonial-era labor hierarchies, which have been perpetuated in postcolonial governance structures.”^[7] The economic relationship between tea estate owners and laborers is referred to as modern-day slavery, which Shahadat et al. examine in their research on tea plantations. Salam refers to the high rates of child marriages on tea estates, inadequate food provisioning, and inadequate medical and educational resources supports this claim. Shahadat et al. expand upon this in how discriminatory laws and the established relationship between manager and laborer has created an isolated and captive workforce, labeled as modern day slavery.^[8] Laborers have their work, living, and recreation all on the tea plantation, creating a “‘total institution.’"^[9]

Shahadat et al. visited one tea plantation from 2011 to 2020, spending 3 or 4 days a week for 12 weeks at each site. Through observation and interviews with laborers, they learned the usual working hours, how tasks were allocated, and the conditions. Tea plantations are required to provide education or childcare laborers’ children, which would not be an option outside of the plantation due to their caste, but they were nonexistent. Spraying pesticides, working barefoot, and the physical pain from working in the fields created numerous health issues that went unaddressed. Shahadat et al. witnessed verbal and emotional abuse, threatening them with law enforcement involvement to get obedience; a completely dehumanizing act made normal. Even in the face of these extreme physical and isolating conditions, laborers do not leave. When prompted about this, one laborer replied, “‘This is our birthplace. We don’t know people outside the plantations and with not enough money in our pocket, where to go? What if something happened to us while outside the plantation?’”^[10] Slavery is perpetuated on tea plantations through regulatory mechanisms like low wages, abuse, and reliance on the plantation for all aspects of life.

Unionization

Researcher Mohammad Fakhrus Salam investigated the impact of trade unions on historic poor housing, limited wages, and limited access to social services for tea plantation workers. Trade unions are a fundamental workers’ right according to the International Labour Organization. The People’s Republic of Bangladesh includes this right in its Constitution and the Bangladesh Labour Act of 2004 provides the framework for trade unions in the country.^[11] However, the Bangladesh Tea Employees' Union has a decline in its members. Former members of the union no longer believe their union leaders to be effective, questioning their efficacy. The government unfortunately makes union success even more unlikely, as “labour laws applicable to the wage structure and working conditions of tea gardens are still kept separate from those applying to the mainstream workforce.”^[12] Some tea laborers use alternative representation, like going to their assistant managers to speak for them when there was a mutual understanding between them as most managers disliked union representatives.

A tea strike in 2022 resulted in 150,000 tea workers striking across 200 different estates, demanding their employers double their daily salary. However, the strike ended after 19 days and only with an increase from 120 Taka to 170 Taka because the union did not consult any workers before agreeing to a new wage. This exclusion of workers in negotiations that impact their own lives perpetuates their mistreatment and the infrastructure that supports it. Salam pushes for the government to intervene and push for an increased daily wage for tea laborers, which would hopefully improve their standard of living.

1. Hossan, Md Sahadat, Masud Ibn Afjal, Md. Faruq Hasan, and Md. Abu Hanif. 2024. “Assessment of Land Dynamics Transformation into Tea Plantations Using Support Vector Machine.” Trees, Forests and People 18 (December): 100703. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tfp.2024.100703. ↑

2. Shahadat, Khandakar, and Shahzad Uddin. 2022. “Labour Controls, Unfreedom and Perpetuation of Slavery on a Tea Plantation.” Work, Employment and Society 36 (3): 522–38. https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170211021567, 527. ↑

3. Shahadat, Khandakar, and Shahzad Uddin. 2022. “Labour Controls, Unfreedom and Perpetuation of Slavery on a Tea Plantation.” Work, Employment and Society 36 (3): 522–38. https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170211021567, 525. ↑

4. Hossan, Md Sahadat, Masud Ibn Afjal, Md. Faruq Hasan, and Md. Abu Hanif. 2024. “Assessment of Land Dynamics Transformation into Tea Plantations Using Support Vector Machine.” Trees, Forests and People 18 (December): 100703. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tfp.2024.100703. ↑

5. Hossan, Md Sahadat, Masud Ibn Afjal, Md. Faruq Hasan, and Md. Abu Hanif. 2024. “Assessment of Land Dynamics Transformation into Tea Plantations Using Support Vector Machine.” Trees, Forests and People 18 (December): 100703. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tfp.2024.100703. ↑

6. Khan, Ashrafuzzaman, and Kristian Lasslett. 2023. “‘We Will Give Our Blood, but Not Our Land!’—Repertoires of Resistance and State-Organized Land-Grabbing at a Bangladeshi Tea Plantation.” State Crime Journal 12 (1): 68–95. ↑

7. Salam, Mohammad Fakhrus. 2025. “Labour Voices in the Tea Plantations: An Analysis of Trade Union Practices in Bangladeshs Tea Industry.” International Journal of Sociology and Anthropology 17 (1): 1–8. https://doi.org/10.5897/IJSA2025.1010, 6. ↑

8. Shahadat, Khandakar, and Shahzad Uddin. 2022. “Labour Controls, Unfreedom and Perpetuation of Slavery on a Tea Plantation.” Work, Employment and Society 36 (3): 522–38. https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170211021567. ↑

9. Shahadat, Khandakar, and Shahzad Uddin. 2022. “Labour Controls, Unfreedom and Perpetuation of Slavery on a Tea Plantation.” Work, Employment and Society 36 (3): 522–38. https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170211021567, 524. ↑

10. Shahadat, Khandakar, and Shahzad Uddin. 2022. “Labour Controls, Unfreedom and Perpetuation of Slavery on a Tea Plantation.” Work, Employment and Society 36 (3): 522–38. https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170211021567, 534 ↑

11. Salam, Mohammad Fakhrus. 2025. “Labour Voices in the Tea Plantations: An Analysis of Trade Union Practices in Bangladeshs Tea Industry.” International Journal of Sociology and Anthropology 17 (1): 1–8. https://doi.org/10.5897/IJSA2025.1010. ↑

12. Shahadat, Khandakar, and Shahzad Uddin. 2022. “Labour Controls, Unfreedom and Perpetuation of Slavery on a Tea Plantation.” Work, Employment and Society 36 (3): 522–38. https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170211021567, 532. ↑