Ceylon Today Editorial

Let May Day truly be a tribute to labour force!

01 May 2017

May Day remains a day of salutation to the labour force which makes the world move for the betterment of all living beings on the earth.

May Day commenced with the agitation of more than 300,000 workers from more than ten thousand business establishments across the United States of America demanding an 8-hour working day on 1 May 1886.

Since then the May Day is celebrated globally as a tribute to the labour force while highlighting their unresolved problems.

However, in Sri Lanka more than glorifying the labour force on the May Day, the international event has been largely misinterpreted as an event where the political parties take the opportunity to show off their strength.

In Sri Lanka May Day also has a sad history with the brutal assassination of President Ranasinghe Premadasa on May Day in 1993.

The second Executive President of Sri Lanka who had been a leader with several humble qualities died in the hands of ruthless LTTE terrorists while the late President mingled freely with the people gathered for the May Day celebration at Sri Sumanatissa Mawatha (former Armour Street) Colombo.

This year the May Day is being celebrated with all leading political parties flexing their muscles to show their strength in the backdrop of Colombo getting a facelift to boost its economy with the creation of the Colombo Port City project and on the other hand with the man-made Meethotamulla garbage dump tragedy.

There was a time when the architect of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew admired Sri Lanka as a promising developing nation with the infrastructure put in place by the British.

However, the unscrupulous politics without any farsightedness which began to take shape gradually has led the island nation on a gloomy path ruining all resources putting the labour force of the country in peril.

Despite the open economic policy of the country, the three decades of strife in the country had ruined the agricultural and the industrial sector to a great extent.

Being described as the Pearl of the Indian Ocean by the historians, Sri Lanka is also considered a heavenly spot on the earth for tourism.

However, it is a pity to note that even after the lessons learnt from the ruthless war which had annihilated several high profile politicians including President Premadasa on a May Day, the politicians in the country are still entangled in political populism with hardly any attention paid towards rejuvenating the country's economy with due consideration for its labour force.

It is important to remember the sacrifices made by the country's labour force from the central hills of the island in the plantation sector and in various other fields in the country.

As several countries are far ahead in strengthening their economies in an extensively globalized atmosphere, Sri Lanka cannot keep on continuing with political populism giving less importance to constructive development activities and to the labour force which remains as the driving force to rebuild the fractured economy of the country.

So the political parties, instead of making the May Day celebration an event to show their strength, must respect the true spirit of this great day and determine to work towards the betterment of the labour force which remains the backbone of the country's economy.

Despite successfully bringing an end to the war, Sri Lanka is yet to travel a long way to put its economy in right shape.

Conducting lengthy processions and holding mega rallies with mudslinging slogans on the May Day will only ridicule the sacrifices made so far by the labour force in the country.

Focusing on rebuilding a peaceful reconciled nation with the salutation for the labour force only will make the May Day celebration a meaningful event.

Daily News Editorial

May Day reflections

01 May 2017

Workers around the world celebrate May Day, also known as Labour Day and International Workers’ Day, today. It is a national holiday in more than 80 countries including Sri Lanka and the event is celebrated in some of the most staunchly capitalist countries too.

The May Day tradition is around 125-years-old, having begun as an agitation campaign against harsh working conditions by workers in the US in 1886. They were demanding a 40-hour working week. The slogan was “eight hours for work, eight hours for rest and eight hours for what you will”.

In the famous 1886 Haymarket incident in Chicago, US, police fire killed several trade union leaders and workers who were engaged in a demonstration seeking better working conditions and fewer working hours. It was usual for employers then to get their employees to work for 16-18 hours a day. It is generally accepted that these events eventually led to the adoption of the 40 hour working week.

In 1889, the first congress of the Second International, meeting in Paris for the centennial of the French Revolution and the Exposition Universelle, following a proposal by Raymond Lavigne, called for international demonstrations on the 1890 anniversary of the Chicago protests. May Day was formally recognized as an annual event at the International’s second congress in 1891. However, the US and Canada now observe the Labour Day in September.

With the establishment of the United Nations, a specialist agency for labour matters, called the International Labour Organization (ILO) was created. In cooperation with Governments around the world, it has evolved labour charters honoured by all UN members. This has ensured much better working conditions than the demonstrators of 1886 ever envisaged.

Sri Lankans have observed May Day for decades. It is a vibrant event with rallies, demonstrations and parades. Over the years, May Day has been transformed into a political event based loosely on the significance of the day for the working class. It has become an opportunity for the political parties to show their grassroots strength and also their affinity to the working masses. Although one can no longer witness the massive May Day rallies of yesteryear, the day has still not lost its significance in our country.

Now the focus has shifted firmly towards political propaganda, with workers’ rights and struggles often relegated to the second place. Parties should strive to put the worker first in their rallies and meetings. This year too the parties have made elaborate arrangements for May Day.

The SLFP should be commended for taking May Day celebrations to the outstations – last year, their rally was held in Galle and this year, it is being held in the outskirts of Kandy. This gives outstation workers and party supporters to attend a May Day event closer to their hometowns. The UNP, as usual, has opted for Campbell Park where they held a successful rally last year. The Joint Opposition rally at Galle Face Green has already been subject to controversy as MPs Bandula Gunawardena and Basil Rajapaksa gave widely differing projected crowd figures of two million and 120,000. Filling the Galle Face Green is no easy task and how they cope with the challenge remains to be seen. The JVP too has stuck to its BRC venue, where they are likely to put up a very elaborate stage as is the norm.

In the end, it very hard to separate the labour movement from politics in Sri Lanka. The workers in many organisations are represented by trade unions which are for the most part affiliated to the major political parties. There are some stand-alone trade unions, that find it hard to raise their voice without the backing of a political party.

Sri Lanka has a vibrant trade union sector, especially in the one-million strong government workforce. Most private sector companies generally do not tolerate trade unions, but this is beginning to change. There also are a number of powerful professionals’ trade unions which should essentially be non-political but which have increasingly dipped their toes in political waters. The GMOA is a good example.

Most trade unions are well known for making demands from the Government in power. For this reason, many trade unions are nearly always at loggerheads with the Government. Some of the demands are reasonable, but most are not. Sri Lanka’s trade unions have a predilection for demanding higher salaries for their workforce, regardless of the economic situation of the country.

Trade unions should stop the current practice of resorting to strikes at the drop of a hat if their demands are not met. That should be a last resort, to be considered only when negotiations with the authorities fail. They should stop taking the public ‘hostage’ when they strike to win their demands.

But do workers and trade unions pause to think of their obligations to their organisations and to the public? This rarely happens. Work really is a two-way street. This May Day, both workers and employers must work towards addressing labour unrest and implementing better working conditions.

The Island Editorial

May Day circuses & ‘mindsuckers’

01 May 2017

 

The animal kingdom is known to have some wily parasites which control the minds of their hosts and turn the latter into zombies. The National Geographic magazine featured some of these ‘mindsuckers’ in 2014; hairworms turn crickets suicidal and wasps make spiders spin their last web and transform ladybirds into suicidal surrogate mothers. Some parasites get into avian faeces to complete their life cycle by infecting snails and causing them to climb to treetops and get devoured by birds.

Animals are, however, not alone in this predicament. Some humans also allow parasites to manipulate them from within to act in self-destructive ways to the benefit of the latter. The plight of the working class in this country is a case in point. Political parasites mainly of three colours—green, blue and red—have turned workers into zombies to achieve their objectives.

Today is May Day. Sri Lankan workers have suffered a crippling blow at the hands of the present government, which, having caused a massive loss of Rs. 10 billon to the Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) through a mega bond racket, is contemplating a massive tax on workers’ savings in their superannuation fund. If such things had happened in any other country workers would have taken to the streets. But, here, the self-emasculated trade unions have chosen to take it lying down.

Worse, the trade union arms (or tails?) of the UNP and the SLFP will take part in the May Day processions of the two parties today, singing hosannas for the government leaders. They seem to have mistaken trade unionism to prostitution to their political masters. The Joint Opposition (JO) leaders also have a history of having workers assaulted and even shot dead to crush trade union struggles and making a despicable attempt to convert the EPF and ETF into a pension fund so as to avoid making lump-sum payments to workers upon retirement and dip into workers’ savings; they also abused the EPF for pump and dump operations in the Colombo Stock Exchange. But, workers and their trade union leaders will shamelessly march in the JO procession today.

It is a pity that workers have chosen to lick the boots of UNP and SLFP leaders. The SLFP and its leftist allies have unconscionably used workers as pawns. In the 1980s, they, in an abortive bid to unsettle the seemingly monolithic JRJ government, called a general strike, which caused about one hundred thousand public sector workers to lose their jobs. Today, the UNP and the SLFP are savouring power together and workers are unashamedly grovelling at the feet of the leaders of these two parties.

Our Rathu Sahodarayas, who were honeymooning with the JRJ government on the sly, pulled out of the 1980 strike at the eleventh hour, betraying the workers. A few years later they gunned down rival trade unionists who refused to toe their line during their abortive second uprising. Having prepared the ground for the current UNP-SLFP political marriage, the Rathu Sahodarayas are today shedding crocodile tears for the workers and being mildly critical of the government over the proposed tax on the EPF. They staged street protests against the Rajapaksa government’s attempt to introduce a private sector pension scheme as part of its plan to convert the EPF and the ETF into a pension fund. But, today, they are only shouting slogans without resorting to action. What has made the self-proclaimed revolutionaries act with restraint? This is the question workers ought to ask the JVP leaders.

Workers have been left without anyone to fight for their rights with might and main because the trade union movement––or what passes for it––is manipulated by the mind-sucking political parasites. Unfortunately, workers haven’t realised this simple truth. The time has come for them to break free from the clutches of wily politicians if they are to win their demands. Let that be their May Day resolution.