Kemiskinan Buruh Pemetik Teh Sebagai Produk Sistem Perusahaan Inti Rakyat Perkebunan (PIR-BUN)

Abstrak

This study explores poverty as a condition that is formed and conditioned by structural arrangements within a smallholder plantation in partnership with a nucleus estate, namely PIR-BUN Danau Kembar. This study reveals how existing structures produce and condition tea pluckers to remain in conditions of poverty in order for the system to continue functioning through normalized structural elements. Based on Gans’s structural–functional analysis of poverty, this study used a qualitative method with purposive sampling of informants. The findings of this study answer two main research questions. First, tea pluckers experience poverty that can be identified through the prevailing social structures within their social lives. In responding to these social structures, the tea pluckers develop social norms as a means of maintaining a sense of ‘security’ in everyday life, such as norms of compliance and resignation. The impoverished condition of tea pluckers is identified through extremely limited levels of income, inadequate housing facilities, the absence of employment rights, and forms of social marginalization. Second, this study reveals the role of structural arrangements in perpetuating poverty through a set of established structural elements, including land ownership and production control systems, the formation of persistent economic dependency, a wage system determined unilaterally, as well as the normalization of poverty for tea pluckers. These findings are expected to broaden the perspectives of policymakers by considering workers as subjects of development, not simply labor. As the goal of establishing PIR plantations is to promote community prosperity.

Kata kunci

• Kemiskinan
• PIR-BUN
• buruh pemetik teh