The people who pick your Assam are off the bushes by 2 p.m. again. Assam's Labour Welfare Department has extended the state's heat-wave working hours for tea garden workers, keeping the plucking day to 6 a.m.-2 p.m. instead of the normal 8 a.m.-4 p.m., the Sentinel reported. The order took effect immediately and stands "until further orders," with no fixed end date.

It is not a new schedule. The department first moved garden hours to beat the afternoon heat in a notification dated May 13, 2025, and today's order is that same schedule, continued rather than replaced. The stated aim is unchanged too: protecting the health and safety of workers who would otherwise be out among the bushes through the hottest part of the day.

Two fewer afternoon hours on the clock is a real change on a plantation, where pay is tied to a plucking target rather than a flat wage. A shorter day under the Plantation Labour Act's own health provisions is the state's trade-off: less leaf picked in peak heat, set against fewer workers going down with heatstroke. Assam's gardens have carried a duty of care like this since the 1951 Act first made garden welfare compulsory, long before the label "heat wave" was doing the explaining.

That trade-off is the whole story here: two fewer hours under the sun, weighed against two fewer hours at the plucking target, and decided again today the same way it was in 2025, in favour of the worker over the leaf.

Sources: The Sentinel, "Assam Government extends revised tea garden working hours due to ongoing heat wave".