Workers on Sri Lanka's estates reveal the bitter truth behind ethical labels on tea packets

When purchasing tea at the supermarket, consumers often see labels such as "ethically sourced" on the packaging. These labels are intended to indicate that the tea production process meets certain ethical standards, such as ensuring tea farmers receive a minimum wage, have safe working and living environments, and have access to basic necessities like clean drinking water.

Certification systems such as the Rainforest Alliance and Fairtrade were established with the initial intention of ensuring that tea producers comply with these ethical standards. However, an investigation by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's (ABC) "Foreign Correspondent" program in Sri Lanka found that some certified tea plantations, whose supplier lists prominently feature well-known global brands, have failed to deliver on these promises.

Many brands rely on third-party auditing bodies to verify their compliance with relevant standards, thereby assuring consumers of the ethical reliability of their products. However, the ABC investigation revealed serious flaws in this system. In tea plantations certified by the Rainforest Alliance, investigators found that workers lacked access to basic facilities such as drinking water and toilets, housing was dilapidated, and children were forced to work in vegetable gardens instead of attending school, all of which violate the standards of the certification system.

"Ethical standards are actually just a marketing tool," said Michael Joachim, head of a non-governmental organization dedicated to advocating for the rights of Sri Lankan tea farmers. "The workers have no idea that these teas are being sold based on certified standards." This problem was confirmed to be widespread through interviews with dozens of tea farmers and industry experts, but many were unwilling to speak publicly for fear of Sri Lanka's powerful tea interests.

In the remote mountainous region outside Kandy, in Sri Lanka's central highlands, tea plantations stretch out like a vast, verdant carpet. Throughout the tea estates in the region, female workers move among the neatly trimmed tea bushes, picking fresh tea leaves and placing them in sacks hung from their foreheads. This seemingly idyllic scene masks the harsh lives of tea plantation workers.

Many workers labor barefoot on steep slopes, moving through bushes teeming with leeches and snakes. ABC's "Foreign Correspondent" program visited eight tea plantations that supply well-known brands such as Lipton, Tetley, Twinings, Yorkshire Tea, and Dilmah.

At a tea plantation listed as a supplier for Lipton and Twinings, reporters met Darshini, a tea plantation worker. The plantation holds both Rainforest Alliance and Fairtrade certifications. While Lipton only sources tea from Rainforest Alliance certified plantations, Twinings also has its own set of ethical standards. Darshini, who started picking tea as a teenager and has been doing it for nearly thirty years, knows the hardships of the work well.

On the day of ABC's visit, she was one of many female workers picking tea in a remote tea field. The work is extremely strenuous. To earn the minimum wage, she must pick 18 kilograms of tea leaves each day to meet her quota. "I've only picked 6 kilograms so far, and I still need to pick another 12 kilograms," she said. "If I pick less than 15 kilograms, I only get half the wage." After completing their picking, workers must carry the heavy sacks of tea leaves for several kilometers to reach the weighing station.

Rainforest Alliance and Fairtrade certifications are intended to alleviate the harsh conditions inherent in this type of work. For workers on this tea plantation, the certifications should guarantee that they "always have access to safe and sufficient drinking water" and "adequate, clean, and usable toilets," whether in the tea fields or nearby. But workers told ABC that the tea plantation did not provide these facilities. "We don't have these facilities in the tea fields," said Maheswarie, a tea picker. "There are no toilets in the tea fields." They also stated that they often do not have access to drinking water in their residences.

According to Rainforest Alliance standards, these violations should be discovered through routine audits, but Maheswarie said that auditors do come, but the managers "don't allow us to talk to them." "Maybe the auditors can't talk to us because we might tell them the truth," she said.

Many tea pickers in Sri Lanka's vast tea plantations also live in housing provided by the tea plantations, known as line rooms. Located on the edge of the tea plantations, the line rooms are arranged in rows, long single-story buildings made of weathered stone and topped with dilapidated corrugated iron. Many of the line rooms date back to the British colonial rule of Ceylon, and appear to have changed little since then.

At one tea plantation visited by ABC, reporters met Vimaladevi, a tea picker, who showed them the one-room dwelling she shares with seven family members. "I was born in this house, and all my children were born here too," she said. The tea plantation is Rainforest Alliance certified and is a supplier to Tetley, Dilmah, Lipton, Twinings, and Yorkshire Tea.

According to the Rainforest Alliance certification, these houses need to be "safe, clean and decent," but Vimaladevi's roof is damaged and her home is frequently flooded. During the dry season, there is no drinking water. Earlier last year, "we didn't have water for three months," she said. Although the Rainforest Alliance requires audits to ensure compliance with standards, Vimaladevi said she has never seen an auditor. "No one has ever come to see our house. You are the only ones who have come."

In Sri Lanka, who is truly responsible for maintaining these houses is a complex issue. This tea plantation, like many others, operates on government-owned land that is leased to the tea plantations, and this shared responsibility can mean that problems are overlooked. Although the Sri Lankan government has announced plans to build new houses or repair tea plantation houses, many workers still live in dilapidated conditions.

The auditing system responsible for uncovering these issues also has problems, according to Michael Joachim, head of a local non-governmental organization that has worked with tea pickers for nearly forty years. He said that the audits conducted by certification bodies are often pre-arranged. "There is no real checking from the workers to see if the ethical standards are being followed," Mr. Joachim said.

"The workers also don't know that these teas are being sold based on certified standards." He believes that the certification system is nothing more than "a marketing strategy designed to convince buyers that ethical standards are being followed, but in reality, ethical standards are not being followed here."

Tea brands have defended their use of certifications. Lipton confirmed that it conducts independent inspections of its suppliers and "regularly checks [tea plantations] to ensure that they meet certain environmental and social standards." Tetley also stated that it maintains direct contact with its suppliers. "In addition to the independent audits conducted as part of the Rainforest Alliance certification, our own tea purchasing team regularly visits tea plantations and conducts informal audits, which include talking to workers," a Tetley spokesperson said.

Dilmah confirmed that while it holds Rainforest Alliance certification, the brand conducts its own inspections and "conducts random audits of other tea plantations to ensure compliance." Yorkshire Tea stated that it is aware that "certification can only provide limited protection" and has its own monitoring system. Twinings does not use Rainforest Alliance or Fairtrade certification, but has its own independent standards. In a statement, Twinings said that it takes the standards in its supply chain very seriously and "has a team in our main sourcing countries working with our suppliers to check that these internationally recognised standards... are being adhered to."

Sri Lankan tea is exported to more than 140 countries and remains an important part of the national economy, directly employing about 10% of the population. The country produces more than 250 million kilograms of tea each year and is Australia's second-largest tea supplier. Once the world's largest tea producer, Sri Lanka is now struggling to compete with countries such as China, India, and Kenya.

Economic instability, rising production costs, and increasing global competition have driven down prices, making it more difficult for Sri Lankan producers to make a living. "We are high-cost, high-value producers, but the profit margins are razor-thin," said Anil Cooke, a Sri Lankan tea broker. "So even a small change in price can mean that producers are selling tea for less than the cost of production. This is the 'dance with the devil' that we face every week. A hundred bags of tea on the shelf sell for about the same price as a cup of coffee."

Dilmah said in a statement that the tea industry is undervalued, further exacerbating the problem. "The Sri Lankan tea industry faces the paradox of a colonial structure struggling to survive in a 21st-century context, compounded by the hostility of a discount culture, which adds to the toxicity of this paradox," a spokesperson said.

Tea plantation workers bear the brunt of this. Suranga Herath, a veteran tea producer, witnessed this problem firsthand. In 2010, frustrated by the poor conditions on tea plantations, he decided to take a different approach at his company, English Tea Shop. He switched to selling higher-value herbal teas and sourcing directly from small farms, while adopting fully organic farming to avoid selling through the auction system. He found that he could charge a higher price for his products while ensuring that workers received fairer wages.

"We saw a long time ago how tea was being devalued, commoditized, and squeezed by price pressures," he said. "But [the money] wasn't flowing to the workers properly. Sometimes, we felt helpless. We didn't know how to address their living conditions, their housing. The issue of living wages is very serious."

He said that "the elephant in the room" remains the price. "Consumers are not demanding cheap tea. It's the brands that are pushing down the prices," he said. "So, how do you get out of the vicious cycle? It's up to the brands to take the first step." Some tea brands told "Foreign Correspondent" that they are aware that low prices at supermarket checkouts are harming tea producers around the world.

A Dilmah spokesperson said, "Price is at the heart of the whole problem," noting that in 2024, "36% of all tea sold in Australia was discounted." A Lipton spokesperson agreed, saying that it is "unsustainable" when "the typical price of a tea bag is only 6 cents."

Poverty is a major issue here. Legally, tea plantations must pay their employees a minimum wage, which is also a requirement of the Rainforest Alliance and Fairtrade certifications. But Darshini said that she struggles to support her family on the minimum wage and sometimes has to send her three children to school hungry. Many workers are trapped in a cycle of wage advances, ultimately becoming heavily indebted.

"We don't have enough money to repay the loans. It's not enough to feed the children either," she said. "We eat one meal a day and starve the rest of the time." In some cases, poverty on tea plantations means that children have no choice but to find work instead of attending school. According to Sri Lankan law and Rainforest Alliance certification standards, all school-age children living on tea plantations must attend school until the age of 16.

But at a tea plantation holding Rainforest Alliance certification, ABC found two children working as laborers in a privately owned vegetable garden on the plantation. A 12-year-old girl working in the vegetable garden said that she dropped out of school a year ago and no one noticed. "I go to work because my family is struggling," she said, adding that the 500 rupees ($2.65) she earns from working provides food for her family. "Sometimes we cry because there is no food and we are hungry." She desperately wants to go to school and be able to play with other children in the afternoon, but her family's poverty leaves her no choice.

Jehan CanagaRetna, the Rainforest Alliance's national representative in Sri Lanka, said that children "absolutely should not" be dropping out of school to work. "That would be a failure of [the tea plantation] to adhere to the standards, which needs to be rectified immediately," he said. He said that because the land they operate on belongs to the government, it is difficult to ensure that all tea plantations certified by his organization maintain standards.

This means that improving facilities such as drinking water and toilets in tea fields and houses is very difficult. "But the problem is that the regional plantation companies are also struggling to achieve adequate revenue levels to accomplish all of these things," he said. "If the shared responsibility [between the government and the tea plantations] is not working, it will be very difficult." When asked about the failures of Rainforest Alliance certified tea plantations, he said that supermarkets and brands need to help address the problem by raising prices.

"So, on the one hand, someone is asking you to have these things, but they are also not willing to participate in solving the problem that they are asking to be solved," he said. But he stated that "everyone who drinks tea" has a responsibility to understand where their tea comes from and the living conditions of the people who produce it. Mr. CanagaRetna said that if audits are missing violations, then "there is a problem with the system," but certification bodies cannot improve standards on tea plantations simply by suspending those that do not comply.

"Just going and suspending them is not easy, and it doesn't work, because that just spirals into another problem," he said. He said that a better approach is to work with tea plantations to continuously improve conditions. "So, my role here is to have discussions with them, see how they are doing, and what their problems are."

Roshan Rajadurai, a spokesperson for the Ceylon Planters' Association, is the body representing major tea plantations. He said that it is almost impossible for tea plantations to ensure that all workers have access to proper working and living conditions. "You have to understand that we are looking after a vast, nearly 70,000-hectare area with a million people," he said. "There may be some instances. I'm not saying one hundred percent, we don't know."

Mr. Rajadurai said that tea plantation companies like his own have worked hard to improve conditions on tea plantations, including building more than 100,000 toilets, improving the supply of drinking water, and building nearly 65,000 new homes for workers. But because the selling price of tea struggles to match the cost of production, tea plantations cannot keep up with expensive certification programs. "These brands are just asking us to make a huge effort, but only pay us $4 at the auction," he said.

"[They] can insist that their local agents pay us more money. They want everything, and we have to solve the problem from meager earnings, and now the earnings are on par with the costs. Even if you want to do something very altruistic, do something for the workers, where does the money come from?"

ABC informed the brands about the problems found on the tea plantations, but did not disclose the specific locations, in case workers were retaliated against for speaking the truth. Twinings, Lipton, Yorkshire Tea, Dilmah, and Tetley said in statements that they regularly monitor the conditions of tea plantations on their supplier lists, with some brands saying they would investigate the issues raised.

The Sri Lankan tea industry faces a fundamental challenge: how to ensure that tea is produced at a price that allows workers to earn a living wage. Some, like Suranga Herath, believe that certification schemes do not do enough to guarantee fair conditions for workers and that brands should not use them as a smokescreen to evade responsibility. "Brands must stand up – establish direct relationships with producers and farms, ensure fair wages, and improve living conditions," Suranga said. "You can't just put a Fairtrade or Rainforest Alliance logo on it and call it ethical. That's not enough."