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Strike? What strike? Unions call for electricity hike protest a fizzer
By guile and intimidation, Govt. coerces employees to report for work
Last Tuesday’s strike over soaring electricity prices by some opposition trade unions ended in a flop, failing to cripple any key sectors including transport, health, ports or education. In fact, the government beefed up arrangements to enhance the function of these sectors.
No show: Trade unions take to the streets in Colombo. Pic by Indika Handuwala
Union leaders claimed partial success on the ground that their members struck work in public and private sector concerns.
But fearing to be branded as strikers, more public servants than usual turned up for work on Tuesday: an increase in attendance of 3 per cent was reported in the public sector.
Ceylon Mercantile Union President Bala Tampoe claimed that a number of private companies had participated in the strike but on the contrary no private companies were affected by the strike. The Sri Lanka Transport Board (SLTB) deployed 175 more buses to prevent a crippling of the bus services.
The SLTB Vice Chairman, L.A Wimalaratne told the Sunday Times that normally 4,500 buses are deployed, but on Tuesday 4,675 buses had been put into operation while the attendance of employees too were high. The Secretary of the Ministry of Public Administration P.B. Abeykoon said the attendance of employees at public institutions on Tuesday exceeded 93.5 per cent.
“People do not trust the trade unions; they know such strikes are not practical, so they reported to work. We collected statistics on the number of employees to examine whether the strike affected attendance,” Mr. Abeykoon said. The government sent out officials to monitor attendance in the public sector.
National Hospital Director Dr. Anil Jaasinghe told the Sunday Times said 100 per cent of hospital employees reported to work.
The attendance of staff in schools, too, was good, but trade unions said that was because most schools had been asked to conduct Seela Viyapara (religious programmes) for Vesak and also because the salaries of teachers were paid on Tuesdays.
There was disagreement among trade unions about whether a strike should have been called.“This was the wrong time to go on a strike,” said convenor of the Sri Lanka People’s Movement Against Increasing the Electricity Bill (PMAIEB) and President of Health Service Trade Union Alliance, Saman Ratnapriya, who had initially supported a mass protest campaign against the electricity rates.
“To make a strike successful the public should feel the necessity to call a strike.
“We believe that if the parties that organised the May 21 strike waited until people received their electricity bills and saw the impact of the power price increases there would have been a better response from each sector.” Mr. Ratnapriya added that the government could, in fact, reduce electricity prices as the production of hydro power had increased as a result of the prevailing rainy climate and also because world fuel prices had decreased.
“We are giving the government a two-week period to take steps to reduce the increased electricity price, Mr. Ratnapriya said. “If it fails to do so we are going to start our protest by gathering people through awareness programmes in cities.“We have planned to go first to Kandy (June 6), then Galle and Anuradhapura and show our protest against the current proceedings of the government which is burdening the average man by various price hikes.”
The JVP-led National Trade Union Centre Chairman, K. D. Lal Kantha, accused the government of creating fear among public servants to make them report to work despite the strike call. He said employees had been induced to come to work because their salaries had been paid on Tuesday even though this was not the normal day for issuing government wages.
The government had also asked people to sign attendance sheets in the morning, at midday and when they left work in order to check whether they had completed a day’s work.“The government has requested a list of names of employees who did not attend work on Tuesday and asked them to give excuses for the leave they took. We also got information from the public that the government had cancelled leave for that day,” he added.
UNP-led Jathika Sevaka Sangamaya General Secretary, Sirinal de Mel, said that the protest had not proceeded as expected by unions because the government had intimidated workers in various ways.“They were threatened against joining the strike. This was the reason for the failure of the strike.” In the future, he said, unions would not call single-issue strikes such as on power price increases alone, but join it with other issues such as water tariff increases, bad fertilisers and problems in the fisheries sectors.
Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Development Minister, Rajitha Senarathne, defending actions taken to prevent the strike taking place, said a government would always take steps to prevent strikes as work stoppages disrupted everyone.“Throughout the years the governments have taken steps to avoid such protests. It will be a government without a backbone if it doesn’t take such steps,” he said.
Minister Senaratne said that the strike was a failure because the public did not want to take part in the strike.
“If they were aiming to go on a massive strike where the people abstained from any work and where all sectors are disabled, they should have gone ahead with it without yielding to any of the steps that they claim that the government took,” he said. Private Transport Services Minister, C. B. Rathnayake, said that the transportation during that day was normal and no disruption or delays were made to the day’s schedule.
“The public rely on the service, and we asked all private bus operators to continue a normal day’s work. If there had been any cases where operators abstained from working and caused difficulty for the bus users we will get reports and take action against them. We will even take steps to cancel their route permits,” he said.
Nevertheless, Mr. Lal Kantha said that the protest was successful in several areas of the country. He claimed that 264 private organisations had joined the protest and that shops in towns such as Chilaw and Anuradhapura had been closed, “and in some towns there were black flags hoisted favouring the protest”.
He said this had been a strike where only a selected group of trade unions and organisations had been asked to join the protest. The unions had achieved their objectives, which were: to create awareness among the public, point out where the government is misleading them, and get protests started.
Federation of University Teachers Association President, Dr. Nirmal Ranjith Devasiri, said that even though teachers had not take part in the strike this did not indicate that they supported the rise in power prices.PMAIEB member Joseph Stalin of the Ceylon Teachers’ Union said teachers had not participated in the strike because they believe that the strike should have been well organised and that the general public should have been mobilised.
“We do not go at once to a general strike but first call a one-hour token strike,” he said, adding that a protest march organised by teachers on May 15 had been successful and well mobilised and had attracted public support.
Lanka Teacher Services Union General Secretary, Mahinda Jayasinghe, claimed the strike had been successful in outstation areas if not in Colombo. The attendance of teachers and principals was collated by the zonal education division in the Colombo district in order to strictly stop the trade union action, he said.
“Paying the salaries of teachers on May 21 and conducting Seela Viyapara in schools (on that day) were tactics to sabotage the strike action,” he said. “The government should understand that it was not a general strike but a token strike.” The Lanka Jathika Estate Workers Union General Secretary K.Velayutham said that 25-30 per cent of plantation sector employees had participated in Tuesday’s strike.
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