November 2016

This case study focuses on the working and living conditions of tea plantation workers in India. A range of transnational companies are linked through supply chains to Indian tea plantations…Tea plantation workers face a number of issues concerning low wages, insecurity of employment, health and safety concerns, and poor quality of social infrastructure and services available to workers on plantations…[O]ne of the questions examined in this case is why so few grievances have been brought through transnational non-judicial grievance mechanisms…The case study also examines the operation of formal transnational complaint handling mechanisms…Where transnational grievance mechanisms have been used, their relatively weak leverage has meant that they have had little impact on facilitating individual remedy. However, where involvement of transnational non-judicial grievance mechanisms has provided…indirect support to organising grassroots workers, the case suggests that engagement with these mechanisms can sometimes have a small, positive effect on…improvements to working…conditions…

[Also refers to Unilever.]