Socialist Party of Sri Lanka
Workers in Sri Lanka are getting organised. Mahinda Devege reports from a recent delegate meeting called to coordinate a pay campaign across the island.
Over 120 delegates from more than 20 public-sector trade unions agreed to mount a joint campaign on pay. Against a background of rising prices and the threat of deep cuts in public spending in the government’s November budget, any such move towards united action by Sri Lanka’s fragmented unions would represent an important step forward. But the meeting of the Delegates‘ Forum of the Joint Trade Unions was important for more than that. It brought together unions from the National Trade Union Congress, which is politically associated with the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, (People’s Liberation Front) JVP, independent unions such as the Independent Ceylon Teachers‘ Union and unions such as the Joint Health Workers‘ Union and the Socialist Plantation Workers‘ Union which are politically affiliated to the Socialist Party of Sri Lanka, the Sri Lankan section of the League for the Fifth International.
Over 120 delegates agreed on the united pay campaign.