Jalpaiguri

In India, the overall status of tea plantation workers and their working environment is governed by the Plantation Labour Act (PLA), 1951, and the rules framed by the state governments. Tea-processing workers are largely associated with ‘red-collar’ jobs that demand empirical study of their job satisfaction. Historically, tea-processing has been one of the major industrial sectors of Jalpaiguri district. This study determines the factors influencing job satisfaction among workers of tea-processing units in the Rajganj block of Jalpaiguri district. A semi-structured schedule was administered to 250 randomly selected respondents. Data were analysed using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) followed by Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). Results show that wage and health-care facilities exert a strong positive effect on job satisfaction (β = 0.77). Welfare and job security (β = –0.04) and housing and supervision (β = –0.02) exhibit weak negative effects, indicating that moderate changes in these variables produce only slight changes in satisfaction. The findings underscore the primacy of wage and health-care benefits for improving job satisfaction in the tea-processing sector of the study area.