Daily News Editorial

Workers’ role in pandemic fight

Today, the workers’ organisations of the world usually parade and demonstrate their unity as various classes of wage-earners in their struggles to protect their livelihoods. From the plantations of the hills to urban industry and services workers and, to rural craft and agri-workers in the provinces, women and men of the working class usually spend May Day celebrating their vital role as the cogs in today’s vast global economic machine.

Today, however, the streets will not echo to the tread of colourful trade union parades, chanted slogans and the exhortations of May Day rally speakers.

The giant global economic machine has partially ground to a halt as humanity takes cover and fights off the deadly, livelihood-crippling COVID-19 pandemic. The UN’s International Labour Organisation (ILO) is warning that nearly half the world’s population of daily wage earners have lost their livelihood due to the economic shutdown and suspension of most public human activity.

International Workers’ Day, which falls today, is more popularly known as ‘May Day’. The term ‘May Day’ originally described the ancient European spring season festival. In 1904, the first internationally networked workers’ organisations of Europe adopted May 1 as the day to celebrate the social role and importance of wage-labour. This workers’ network, called the ‘Second International’, chose May 1 in order to commemorate the massacre by police firing of trade union leaders who had been agitating on labour issues in Chicago, USA, in early May, 1886.

Subsequently, the ILO, which was formed in 1919 in Geneva in the aftermath of the First World War, adopted this date as the International Labour Day and it is observed as such today by most United Nations Member States. It is a holiday in many countries, though the US, where May Day had its origins, now celebrates Labour Day in September. The ILO performs a key role in bringing together the three pillars of the world economy: labour (organised working class), capital (employers and business leadership) and Government.

The deadliness of the COVID-19 is deceptively not immediately tangible. Although the fatalities are swift and many, they are still relatively less in proportion to the numbers of infected people. But to maintain even a semblance of control over the rapid spread of the contagion, human society has had to halt public activity as much as possible. In a globalised capitalist economy where speed of production and delivery is fundamental to market success, this has meant a crippling of economic life across the world.

The ILO, which has been monitoring worker conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic warns in its latest global assessment that: “The continued sharp decline in working hours globally due to the COVID-19 outbreak means that 1.6 billion workers in the informal economy – that is nearly half of the global workforce – stand in immediate danger of having their livelihoods destroyed.”

Some economic theorists may debate the merits of economic shutdowns as opposed to market profitability and sustainability, pointing out that the actual death toll seems to be low in proportion to the numbers infected. But Governments and societies the world over have been largely unanimous in quick action to ‘lockdown’ as the first step in a series of measures meant to restrict the contagion and reduce the long term impact on economic life.

The point is that the contagion is incredibly swift in spread, thereby burdening health systems with a massive human attrition that is occurring suddenly and immediately rather than being spread out over time. The worst affected countries are experiencing infection spreads in the thousands almost daily and fatalities in the hundreds daily. In the space of four months since its outbreak, almost all of the world’s 190+ countries have been hit by the pandemic with Antarctica being the only unaffected continent.

Therefore, we have the economic shutdown. Already, merchandise exports in the first part of this year have shown a serious decline. As we mark May Day this year, the struggles of the working class have a new frontline, one that must bring together all socio-economic classes, labour and capital, against the common enemy that is the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fortunately, some of the big corporates have already begun action to reorganise their labour cohorts to ensure employee continuity to some degree. But many small and medium scale enterprises will inevitably shed much of their labour if they have to survive in the post-COVID market.

The Government, national political leaderships and labour leaderships now face the challenge of catering to the needs of the working classes - i.e. wage-earners – whose livelihoods are being drastically emasculated. Trade unions will need to strategize to ensure safety nets for retrenched labour on the one hand while devising innovative parallel income-earning avenues for the newly unemployed and under-employed. Above all, given the need for smooth and rapid economic recovery, there is the over-riding need to ensure industrial peace. The social sensitivity of the business leadership, too, must come in to play.

The Island Editorial

Virus and labour

This year’s International Workers’ Day has dawned amidst doom and gloom across the globe. It is being celebrated without mass gatherings on account of the Covid-19 pandemic. Workers will neither miss nor lose anything owing to the cancellation of May Day processions, which are only a shameful display of the servility of the working class to political leaders who use trade unions to further their own interests.

Chaos that the spread of coronavirus and the resultant lockdowns have wreaked on the world economy has caused widespread unemployment. The current international health emergency has also thrown up new problems and challenges for workers as well as their employers. All these years, May Day has been characterised by workers’ demand for a better deal and their rants against the capitalist class represented by their employers. But, today, coronavirus has caused the employer-employee relations to be redefined; both parties have had to sink their differences and join forces to safeguard their shared future.

The virus may hopefully run its course within the next few months, but the damage it has already inflicted on economies around the world will be there for years to come, and give rise to unforseen issues. Job losses and the attendant economic woes can lead to numerous social problems with the potential to trigger violent upheavals, threatening law and order and social cohesion.

The latest findings of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) are scary. They reveal that there has been a continuous sharp decrease in working hours globally due to the pandemic, and about 1.6 billion workers in the informal economy are in the immediate danger of losing their livelihoods.

In the US, the world’s largest economy, more than millions of people have lost jobs, so far, and more are expected to file for unemployment benefits, according to the US Labor Department. The New York Times reported, yesterday, that unemployment claims had topped 30 million, in the US. The plight of workers in the developing countries is far worse. The current level of unemployment, in the US, has been described by the media as the worst since the Great Depression, in the 1930s. It is reported that during the first two months of the Covid-19 outbreak, about five million people found themselves out of work, in China.

Trade unions, around the world, will have to strategise and plan for finding solutions to the present-day problems and facing future challenges. There will have to be a radical rethink of the policies the Sri Lankan trade unions, most of which are mere appendages of political parties. They will have to make constructive interventions in the formulation of the post-Covid-19 state policies as regards economic recovery if workers’ lot is to improve. This is not something they will be able to achieve by adopting a confrontational approach though there may arise certain situations where they have to fight for protecting workers’ rights.

The ILO has urged states to ensure that the measures aimed at economic reactivation ‘follow a job-rich approach, backed by stronger employment policies and institutions, better-resourced and comprehensive social protection systems’. It has also called for international co-ordination on stimulus packages and debt relief to make recovery effective and sustainable, and pointed out that international labour standards, which enjoy tripartite consensus can provide a framework. In this scheme of things, trade unions are of crucial import; they have a pivotal role to play in enabling the post-pandemic economic recovery and safeguarding workers’ interests.

Daily Mirror Editorial

Unchanging nature of our political system

This is a country that’s obsessed with elections. Now most of the citizens of the country are getting ready for the upcoming Parliamentary Elections. What we are not obsessed with is to send lawmakers with a clean sheet to parliament. 

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa wishes to have the elections and to install a new cabinet in parliament. One of his pledges during the last presidential elections was to create a secure nation where people belonging to Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim races can live in harmony.

But as we know there is tension between these communities; especially after the Easter bombings which sees fingers being pointed at the minority Muslims. It was a group of misguided Muslims who went about exploding bombs at these Christian places of worship, but the entire Muslim race had to take the brunt of these horrendous attacks. 

The catchline which is to have a secure nation where all three major races can live peacefully and in harmony was also used by former Prime Minister SWRD Bandaranaike in 1956. Sadly the status quo has not changed for the past 64 years despite there being several changes in governments and the end to a bloody three-decade-old civil war; which left scores of civilians dead and almost wiped out a vibrant Tamil culture. 

Lawmakers surface from time to time and go about making hilarious promises. The widow of SWRD Bandaranaike, Sirimavo, made an election pledge during the 1970 General Elections by promising to provide rice concessions. She promised to give two measures of rice per rice ration book. In 1988 she promised to bring in peace to the country.

Then we had the Ranasinghe Premadasa era. The lawmaker from a less affluent background rose in the ranks of the United National Party (UNP) and became the President of the country with the blessings of both the rich and the poor. Critics will vouch that the late Premadasa achieved some of his targets; chief among which was to eliminate poverty and provide housing for everybody by the year 2000. He was bumped off by tiger rebels on May 1, 1993; sending to the grave not only his remains, but also some of his ambitious plans to strengthen the country’s economy.

President Premadasa’s son Sajith is a key player in the present political stage. He also takes a similar line that his dad took and focuses on the less affluent in order to give them a better life. Sajith also promised to provide shelter to all by the year 2025. 

At present Sajith, heading his own party, sees as his biggest opponent former military man Gotabaya Rajapaksa. What can be observed through the eyes of sharp political analyst is that the Sri Lankan political fraternity is not divided, but united. The manner in which Phottuwa party’s Mahinda Rajapaksa and UNP’s Ranil Wickremesinghe have got on as rivals for years in the political scene provides enough matter to chew on this subject of there being unity among lawmakers. The same old faces appearing to take over portfolios despite there being government changes shows that political rivalries exist only for a short time.

One person who wanted to change this system was president Premadasa who didn’t have room for passengers in his team. We didn’t run for long and made so many enemies. Another lawmaker who is taking on this line is president incumbent Gotabaya Rajapaksa who prefers to work with people with a military background and a few individuals with a proven track record in their chosen professions. Sadly for this country the political set-up doesn’t allow for the settling down of such individuals like Ranasinghe Premadasa and Gotabaya Rajapaksa. 

Film director and playwright Dharmasiri Bandaranayake is one person who depicted this corrupt political set-up in his stage creations which carried the underlying message that whoever who tries to change this political system pays with death or destruction.