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This article focuses on the workers of the tea plantations in Burundi and Kenya, two countries where the tea sector is one of the main sources of rural employment. The agro-industrial plantations and the (smaller) farms employ a large number of workers—women and men—to carry out all the tasks involved in tea production, from plucking to industrial processing. Based on an ethnographic approach, this study relies on over sixty interviews conducted to shed light on the working conditions of agricultural workers in rural settings. It highlights the authoritarian management of the workforce of the tea-producing areas, the difficult working conditions, and the precariousness of employment. It also emphasises the hiring dynamics of educated women and young men in a socio-economic context where being employed as an agricultural worker is still perceived as a privilege despite the forms of casualisation associated with this status.