Stop drinking tea on moral grounds?

FoxEye

FoxEye

FoxEye

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Watched a short BBC report last night about workers in the tea industry in India. Truly appalling as I drink a lot of tea.

The "tea estates" are responsible for housing their workers, and providing for their needs.

Now in India, the reporter says, the "public" are supposed to be permitted to enter the tea estates at any time to check conditions for the workers. Well it didn't take long for the heavies to come in and chuck them out, demanding they stop filming, etc.

Why behave like this? Something to hide, naturally.

One woman says the last time they had a working toilet was 30 years ago. The workers say they are forced to **** in the fields between the tea bushes - nice to think about that one when you're drinking the tea ;)

The housing is awful. They don't even have proper roofs. The rain comes right in and naturally there is no electricity. A room the size of a broom cupboard is shared by 8 people.

They are paid £1/day for working all day. These people are far worse off than the Syrian immigrants. This isn't a short term deal. This is how they will live their entire lives. They've never seen a mobile phone, or possessed anywhere near £3k to pay someone to smuggle them out. And yet there's never been any outcry in the media, and I've never seen any report about this before today.

Now we have all heard about the "Fair Trade" scheme. When it comes to tea, the FT logo is meaningless. The same tea estates supply the non-FT brands as the FT varieties. It is just there to make you feel good when buying, and there is literally no benefit at all for the workers. Which is terrible because it makes us distrust such schemes in future.

Later they interviewed an estate manager (in a plush office, naturally), and he says, "Of course we are concerned and will make efforts to improve." Given that they haven't fixed toilets that last worked for 30 years ago, and are happy for employees to crap in the fields, I can't believe this for one second.

India appears not to even give half a crap about its poor. Disgusting that we've been giving them aid while they've been spending money on a space programme. If they cared at all they could move against the tea esates, but they don't.

So as much as I love tea (I really do!), continuing to drink it would be tantamount to an acceptance of this kind of exploitation. It was different while I was ignorant of it. There are no brands that offer workers a decent deal.

Of course giving it up will have no beneficial effect at all on the lives of these people. And if I dig into the fruit juice industry it's probably the same story everywhere.

But I feel I ought to. Even if it accomplishes nothing.
 
It's not just tea is it though, it's anything that's exported from 3rd world/very poor countries.

Fruit, coffee, rare earth metals for electronics etc etc.
 
How did you come to conclusion that boycotting tea would help anyone?

What a strange perspective.

My advice, stop watching documentaries.
 
I always did try to buy fair trade when it did actually mean something. But it seems now days the logo may not stand for much. People should be paid a wage where they can afford to live.

The best part about it all is these big corporations blaming the consumer for not wanting to pay more, then they reap billions in profits and tax avoid.

Apple are the masters of this.

How do we fix it? yes boycotting a product is probably the only way. I don't drink Tea myself.

Awareness is key and people need to vote with their wallets. Choose products that treat their workers better.

Dunks said:
It's not just tea is it though, it's anything that's exported from 3rd world/very poor countries.

Fruit, coffee, rare earth metals for electronics etc etc.
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Diamonds are a great example of this, pay some African guy peanuts for it, then sell it to some rich moron for a ridiculous mark-up.
 
I often think about stuff like this but somebody has to suffer so that we can live the way we do, it's just how it works.
 
plenty of stuff we buy gets produced by people who are essentially slaves

when we did it initially as an empire we were evil imperialists, then eventually we decided that slavery was a bit bad... eventually we got rid of indentured servants too...

now some of these countries are running their own affairs again, well there isn't much we can do to prevent them from treating their own people like ****, aside from strongly protesting verbally in diplomatic meetings while still giving them aid money etc...

as much as some people around the world get butt hurt over the UK's imperialist past I reckon a lot of people in certain countries would be better off if the British were still running things
 
If people stop drinking tea, do you think the people responsible for this will suddenly start behaving like decent human beings?

It would take a boycott of EVERY industry where treatment of workers is poor and exploitation the norm in order to bring about any kind of change. That's never going to happen, because our standard of living depends on those industries being ran as cheaply as possible.

The only way to change these things is on the ground in those countries, through legislation and action by the governments, the workers and the stakeholders in the industry. Sadly that's a very difficult thing to achieve even after decades of trying.
 
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phil675 said:
I often think about stuff like this but somebody has to suffer so that we can live the way we do, it's just how it works.
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I don't believe that argument for 1 second.

Fair trade at one point was having and probably is still having a positive impact. All you do is pay slightly more and it means someone can have better living standards.
 
the tea industry might be keeping them in bad conditions, but it keeps them out of drug gangs and prostitution and if the industry collapsed thats what there'd be.

if anything we need more people drinking tea and tea being more expensive, allowing money to flow down the chain, although human rights and their enforcement needs to improve on the production end before it flows right the way down the chain.

same goes for a lot of things, it's something to think about when you see the volumes of cheap stuff on amazon, our entire society is built on the backs of such harsh conditions and sadly there's never going to be improvement without sacrifices on our end, the world can't support the entire human population living in our luxury, not until the ai robot superfuture we've been promised arrives.
 
dowie said:
as much as some people around the world get butt hurt over the UK's imperialist past I reckon a lot of people in certain countries would be better off if the British were still running things
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zimbabwe used to be referred to as 'the food bowl of africa' until the brits pulled out and a certain mr mugabe got in charge.

tbh as bad as it sounds maybe a good life of well treated slavery is better than a free man being ground into the dirt purely by circumstance.
 
Surely tea pickers having jobs is a positive impact too? They are being paid something instead of being poor and starving.

Remember that India has a massive culture difference to us. Grand palaces in the middle of slums etc. It is probably the most mutli-cultural country on the planet (perhaps second to the US?). You have to expect extreme financial differences to coincide with that.

I concur that it doesn't make it right and something has to be done but this is hardly Nestlé in Africa.

As I say, strange perspective if you want to help.
 
You shouldn't drink black tea anyway, it causes skeletal fluorosis. Especially with the B-grade fluoride our governments put in our water supply.
Why do you think older people need so many hip replacements and have so many joint pains.
 
stopper said:
You shouldn't drink black tea anyway, it causes skeletal fluorosis. Especially with the B-grade fluoride our governments put in our water supply.
Why do you think older people need so many hip replacements and have so many joint pains.
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With the amount of tea I've consumed in my lifetime, I should think I'm already fubar'd, if there are any health risks :p
 
Laughable when the UK's average living conditions/standards are rapidly being lowered under austerity measures as quickly as possible to match India/China anyway.
 
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