For households that have both non-tapping and tapping rubber
plantations, types of labor used more or less followed the same trend as those having
tapping plantations. In all the three RP zones, percentage of households that used only
family labors declined with increasing size of rubber plantations, while percentage of
households that used only hired labors or used both types of labors correspondingly
increased (Table 4.2). There were only three households in the RNP area that fell into
this household category, one has medium size plantation and the other two have large
size plantations; all of them used both family and hired labors. Thus, family labors
were still the primary source of labors in rubber plantations of this type of households,
with hired labors being increasingly used in larger size plantations.
These results indicated that, although family labors were the dominant
types of labors in rubber plantations in this region, stage of rubber trees in relation to
tapping, size of rubber plantation and production zone all have some influences on the
type of labor used. Non-tapping and small size plantations used mostly family labors,
while additional hired labors were used for plantations at tapping stage and for larger
size plantations. The percentages of households in the individual categories that used
different types of labors, however, varied to some extents among zones.