DO TUS HAVE RIGHT TO HOLD COUNTRY TO RANSOM
Our sister paper Sunday Times quoting Central Bank reports has reported that the “Total number of man-days lost due to labour strikes reached a ten-year high last year and an overall 104,327 man-days were squandered in 41 strikes, the worst tally since 2007.”
The loss of man-days here is the number of man-day loss incurred directly due to the strikes by the workers in public and private sectors, or in other words, the loss incurred by the institutions in which the workers had struck work.
But it is general knowledge, that strikes in any institution affect the functions of many other institutions, resulting in man-hour losses, if not manday losses, in those institutions as well.
For instance, strikes in transport sector would affect almost all other sectors, a strike in the power and energy sector might cripple many other sectors, resulting in the huge economic loss in those sectors as well.
One cannot deny the rights of workers of any institution, public or private, to demand better working conditions or rectify an injustice meted out to them in general or to one of them in particular.
Also it is their right to resort to trade union actions in order to get those demands met. It is also a well known fact that authorities, especially in the public sector pay scant interest in the rights and welfare of the workers which in most cases result in trade union actions.
Also, we have witnessed many a times workers’ struggles being launched by the trade union leaders with scant attention being paid to the interests and the rights of the general public.
Needless to say one did not have the right to jeopardize the rights and the lives of the others in the name of his or her rights. Apart from the loss of man- hours or man-days in an institution where there is a strike, rights to health, education, security etc. of others also jeopardized by those strikes.
Services such as health, education and transport are not privileges offered to the masses by the State or the trade unions, rather they are the rights of the people, universally recognized and accepted as much as the right of the workers to protest through strikes and demonstrations. Hence, rights of the people and those of the workers are intertwined or overlapping. Unless the trade union leaders understand this the masses someday would inevitably turn against them.
On the other hand, that is the situation the authorities too prefer and hence they too would pay a scant respect towards the interests of the people during trade union actions, in order to pit the workers against the masses, irrespective of the pressure being exerted upon themselves.
Trade union actions are not always reasonable. We have witnessed railway locomotive engine drivers’ strikes in the past over a problem faced by a single employee.
Some employees of the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) attempted in last August to take the entire country hostage through an ‘indefinite” strike to pressurize the authorities to meet their demands.
The country was at a standstill for few days, as a result of it, even after that strike was suppressed by the Government. We have heard the trade union leader of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) K.D. Lalkantha threatening to block all six main entry points to Colombo demanding to solve certain problems faced by farmers.
They have the right to make those demands and get the problems solved but they do not have any right to take the country hostage and waste public money and precious time of the people.
Therefore, the responsibility to minimize the ill effects that might be caused by the issues crop up in workplaces lies both with the authorities concerned and the trade union leaders.