Workers’ rights are hard won and must be safeguarded

The ruling NPP put on an impressive display at Galle Face Green during May Day (International Workers Day) celebrations with President Anura Kumara Disanayake leading the party faithfully to mark the day. The main Opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya held their meeting in Talawakele, the SLPP at Nugegoda, while many other smaller meetings were held across the country.

May Day celebrations are a highly politicised event in Sri Lanka with trade unions no longer fighting for the noble cause of the rights of workers. Now their agenda is to work for the political party they are affiliated to and engage in trade union action that suits political agendas more than rights of the working class.

For the JVP-led NPP, for whose supporters strikes, protests were a byword, the tables have turned and they are now the ruling party after being a slideshow for a long time. They no longer can sabotage their own activities and hence all the past May Day sloganeering was stopped this year with the party doing away with the annual parade and settling only for a gathering at Galle Face. What looked familiar was the all red clad party supporters and a massive hammer and sickle in the background, symbols now relegated to the dustbins of history in most parts of the world but still symbols that ‘socialists’ nostalgically like to showcase.

Sri Lanka has a long history of unionism with the first trade union formed in September 1893 by the printers of Ceylon called the Ceylon Printers Society. The coming of the Ceylon Workers Federation in 1920 under the leadership of Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam and Sir Baron Jayatilleke was followed by the formulation of Ceylon Labour Union, by A.E. Goonasinghe, who is the father of the trade union movement in Sri Lanka. Goonasinghe’s movement drew membership from the working class initially in Colombo and the group successfully launched several strikes to win workers’ rights and set in motion a movement which has been fortified over the years. The right to association and the freedom to form and join a trade union is a fundamental right under the country’s constitution.

Bale Tampoe, Dr. N.M. Perera, Colvin R. de Silva have all been stalwarts of the labour movement in the country and their activism along with many others have won for workers many rights including the eight-hour work week, provident fund benefits, workers’ safety, maternity benefits and many others rights which the working class of today take for granted without understanding that these were achieved after agitation and activism.

What the country has today in the form of trade unions are groups pushing political agendas other than fighting to consolidate the rights of workers. Trade unions have become pawns in the hands of political parties while some TU leaders have used unions as a front to build their personal clout and get into parliament and other plum jobs.

The JVP-affiliated unions were instrumental to a large extent in canvassing the votes of the working class for the NPP in the last two national elections. Many unions were formed as a front for political activities and they did so with success. In the past, the Jathika Sevaka Sangamaya of the UNP was a powerful political force while the Ceylon Workers Congress held sway over the estate sector for decades.

The nature of trade unions is by itself political but what is happening now is that they rarely fight for the rights of the workers. Instead they strike and agitate to push personal agendas that serve their political masters. So in a week where Lankans joined workers from around the world to mark the day that draws attention to the working class, it’s good to reflect on those who selflessly worked to gain for Lankan workers admirable rights, many of which are not enjoyed by workers of numerous other countries.