Wages and worker rights take back seat on May Day - EDITORIAL

May Day came and went. Yet very few words were spoken regarding working conditions in the country. Strangely, it was the head of state that raised the problem of wages while addressing the Ceylon Workers’ Congress May Day rally in Nuwara Eliya. 

President Wickremesinghe announced a pay rise for estate workers and justified the upward revision of payment with reference to the historic role the upcountry Tamil estate workers continued to play in keeping our country’s economy afloat. 

However, hardly had the ink on the newspapers dried, when the Planters’ Association fully objected to the promised pay rise to low-level workers. The Association said its members would be filing objections to the proposals. 

What the Association did not reveal was that while it objected to an increased salary of Rs. 1,700 per day for its tea pickers and lower category staff, the salary of a tea plantation manager ranged between $168,980 and $219,619 with an average salary of $200,906 annually!  

Paid extremely high salaries, living in plush bungalows with their families and being waited on hand and foot by poor estate labourers, the chasm between the management and workers is difficult to bridge.  

With electric heaters to keep out the cold and biting night air on the plantations, these managers and their families cannot understand the rigours faced by ordinary estate workers and their children -sleeping huddled on mats on the icy cold floor of the 10 by 12 estate line rooms- which are their ‘homes’. 

Running water is not available in most line rooms with a single tap serving a line. Similarly, sanitation in most line rooms leaves much to be desired with each line having no more than three to four common toilets.  
At least forty or more people have to use this limited facility. Making a bad situation worse these toilets are normally in an unclean condition. 
For these, the ‘Wretched of the Earth’ the whole estate serves as a public toilet. 

In Colombo’s inner cities -an euphemism for the slums which dot our main city- the situation is not much different. According to the Urban Development Authority (UDA), over fifty percent of Colombo’s population lives in shanties, slums, or dilapidated old housing schemes, which occupy nine percent of the total land in the city. Most of these houses lack basic amenities such as running water and proper toilets, although most have electricity. 

Most of these families are engaged in work as temporary labourers and have been living in the city for decades with nowhere to go. They find employment in the city and work as small-time traders and in minor labour jobs, keeping the city’s economy moving.

In the aftermath of the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in the country, the then Governor of the Central Bank pointed out nearly 500,000 temporary workers  had lost their source of income. Following the economic downturn and the bankrupting of the country it means a large number of these persons still remain without a steady income. 
Meanwhile on 26 March this year, according to the provisions of the National Minimum Wages Act, the National Minimum Wage was set at Rs.12,500 and a committee appointed on the recommendations of the National Labour Advisory Council recommends that the wage be increased to Rs.17,500. 

In these columns last week, we pointed out, it costs over Rs. 150,000 per month for a family of four to have two nutritious meals per day. This sum does not take into consideration children’s education, medical care, clothing or other basics. 

Other than the Planters’ Association, (whose members earn in the millions), which rejected outright the raising of workers’ salaries, none of the trade unions or the political parties which girded up their loins on behalf of the working class on workers’ day, neither highlighted nor took these issues with due urgency.  
While understanding the causes behind the prevailing economic woes that beset our people, it’s time Unions, employers and the government draw up plans to weather the worsening economic situation of our underpaid workers.