Key labour body needs legal empowerment: Expert

Tuesday, 13 March 2012 01:20 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

By Uditha Jayasinghe

Members of the National Labour Advisory Council (NLAC) want legal powers to implement their recommendations after a dispute resulted in unions threatening to pull out of the body.

Employers Federation of Ceylon (EFC) Director General Ravi Peiris told Daily FT that the tripartite NLAC was formed to discuss and provide mutually-satisfactory solutions to labour problems and if their ideas were dismissed or stopped by another body, then the whole point of the council would be lost.

“Unions, employers and Government officials form the NLAC, which discusses and finds solutions for workers as well as employer issues. However, if these solutions are blocked by the Finance Ministry or another authority, then our work is in vain. This is why we call for legal powers to implement solutions that the NLAC has agreed on,” he said.

Over the weekend it was reported that trade union leaders including Palitha Athukorala, Anton Marcus and Sri Lanka Nidahas Sevaka Sangamaya’s Leslie Devendra had threatened to pull out of the NLAC over the Treasury blocking amendments to the legal framework of recruiting contract workers.

They charge that the NLAC, which by law needs to approve all labour-related legislation before it is implemented, has been sidelined by the Labour Ministry and by extension the Government. The union leaders had pointed out the issue of the private sector pension scheme last year, which the Government tried to implement without NLAC approval, leading to protests and the death of a worker as an example of how the NLAC has been made irrelevant.

Clearly this is an issue that goes beyond the contract legislation, points out Peiris, adding that the EFC had to work hard to find a compromise between the employers and trade unions. “There are larger problems arising from the existing labour laws that need to be dealt with and if the NLAC is not empowered, then all this work will have no effect.”

Irate trade union heads have insisted that the contract legislation amendments have to be applied when NLAC has its next meeting on 2 April.