Wide class support for CMU strike

ON NOVEMBER 1 all the branches of the Ceylon Mercantile Union, whose members work in the establishments of the Employers' Federation of Ceylon, came out on strike in support of a call by the Union's General Council. The strike was forced on the union by the refusal of the employers to revise a five-year-old collective agreement. Negotiations have been going on for 16 months now.

The call for strike action was preceded by a magnificent rally of the union membership at Colombo's Price Park on October 25. Here the General Council was authorised to call a strike if the Federation rejected any one of the four following conditions:

No member to get less than the minimum increase proposed by the Federation for any particular category as a result of conversion to the nearest point on the new scales as proposed by the Federation; No distinction to be made between married and single employees in the conversion of the new scales;

• No compulsory retirement of any employee at 55 years; The new salary scale to operate on the increased salaries from June Ist, 1966, with arrears of pay from that date.

The employers who conceded point three were later to withdraw that in the face of a threat of strike action.

The Prime Minister and his ministries were unable to alter the course of events and 67 of the country's major imperialist and native-cum-imperialist businesses were struck on the morning of the lst.

Familiar firms

Some of the names of the firms affected might have familiar ring to our readers. Names like Brooke Bond, Lipton, Bata, Singer and subsidiaries of world's tobacco, chemical and shipping giants, and all the great forwarding agencies, shippers and brokers.

Slowly but surely the grip of this section of workers, which is practically total in the clerical, supervisory, technical and minoroffice-staff fields, is being felt on the economy.

As 1s to be expected, there 1s a wail trom the press. Even the Prime Minister (who has up to now played the impartial arbiter) has had to complain about the effects of the strike. More than 7,000,000 Ibs. of tea and 7,500 tons of rubber have piled up in the warehouses of the ports of Colombo and Trincomalee. Tea and rubber auctions have had to be cancelled. 'No Agreement, No Work!' say the strikers.

Here in Colombo, in temperatures soaring into the near nineties, often forced to stand exposed to the merciless midday sun and in a climate which could lay claim to being the world's most torrid, these strikers hold their ground day in and day out chanting slogans and singing satirical songs to the rhythmic to a somewhat rough and ready beat of a kind of Bongo drum. portrait with a few clues to The picketing is systematic, their identity. Adjacent trees are and its impact is striking. Each decked out in a bunting of red picket has a standard banner with pennants. the union's name and branch Across the road or just round proudly emblazoned on it. the corner is their opposite numPlacards state the case of the ber-the law, a proportion of strikers. Scabs are usually treated whom are armed with rifles. In seen in known both photographs picketing wellfirms. NEWSLETTER PHOTOGRAPH

NEWSLETTEK PHUlUuKsid

some areas, motorised infantrymen armed with clubs lie in wait (perhaps they are not armed with more lethal weapons on account f their proclivity to coups l'etat). Police riot squads stand by at their headquarters.

Yet for all this display of armed violence, the government is racked by an internal crisis brought on by the worsening terms of world trade and loss of markets for its main exports and its evident loss of popularity in the recent mini-election (it lost all three seats).

Laws withdrawn

Although a more or less permanent state of emergency has reigned in this island for nearly eight years certain sections of the legislation have been withdrawn on representations from the unions. These include those sections covering the maintenance of what are termed 'essential services' (in which field a great part of the CMU operates), and the press censorship.

Amongst the big imperialist firms there is one section which wishes to 'do business' with the union and another which would see it smashed.

The CMU is, in many respects, in the vanguard of the struggle for unionisation of the country's working class, which includes most grades of technical, supervisory and white collar workers. They are, by the very nature of the near-colonial conditions obtaining here, . practically submerged into the proletariat.

What interests the ruling class most is that this union is making serious inroads into sections of the working class hitherto considered the preserve of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (Reby TONY BANDA

formist) and Communist Party (Moscow- and Peking-orientated) demagogues. These are the manual and unskilled sections of workers.

In the port of Colombo for instance the CMU's membership embraces grades from the highest supervisor down to the wharf hand. On this framework this union could possibly build the most powerful revolutionary confederation of unions in this country's history.

The union is already acting as a pole of attraction to such workers and hence the concern of the bourgeoisie lest it serves to undermine one of the chief props of the bourgeois-democratic regime which has reigned in this country since 1948, i.e., the LSSP (Reformist) and Stalinistcontrolled unions.

Overtime banned

Nonetheless, plants and workplaces not directly affected by this dispute have banned over -time or even struck work, as have the manual grades at Singers, in solidarity action. Most prone to this kind of sympathetic action are workers who are breaking their relations with the reformists and moving towards the CMU.

It also comes as no surprise that this strike causes some embarrassment in these quarters, hitherto conspicuous for their silence or slanders of the CMU leadership. There is verbal support aplenty, and now, threat of a stunt or two which, if anything, would be in order to provide the government with a provocation. The CMU has warned them that it does not desire such kinds of 'help'.

Enormous changes have taken place in this country in the last ten years or so. Besides the near exhaustion of sterling balances, an aggravation in the terms of trade, loss of markets and a chronic downward trend in the prices for its primary products (tea, rubber, coconut, cocoa, there has been a huge population increase (double pre-war) and a huge rise in partially and fully unemployed.

More literate This has been accompanied by a terrific rise in literacy and educational standards. An estimated quarter of the population is chool-going, one of the highest roportions in the world.

Thousands of GCE-level students are forced to seek employment in working-class occupations. This element, now comAs Secretary of the International Committee of the Fourth International, Cliff Slaughter recently visited Greece. This article consists of material collected there, together with the lessons of discussions with comrades of the organisation publishing 'Workers' But by 1953 the most farsighted capitalist leaders began to grasp more correctly the changed situation. They saw that the workers and poor peasants were demoralised by the defeat of the Civil War. states in she Balka, bordering borderin. on Greece, were pleading for friendly relations and trade.

Thus both internally and externally some capitalists saw the prospect of more secure conditions for investment. A new policy was initiated. In 1953 the drachma was devalued from 15 to 30 per dollar. Through heavy indirect taxation and foreign loans the state began to provide a basis for renewed industrial development.

Internationally such steps were necessary for finance capital, as the pattern emerged of heavy capital exports to precisely _ such countries as Greece, rather than to tumultuous colonial countries.

However, while the capitalists were very pleased to get cheaper electricity and transport at no increase in cost to themselves they in fact continued to hold back from investment, particularly long-term investment. Exports amounted to only 2 per cent of national production. Most of industry continued to consist of small factories with obsolete machinery and a large part of capital expenditure devoted to wages.

Greek industry was couraged in its conservatism by the protection against foreign competition by high tariff walls, and against local competition by various local monopolies. Continuous international borrowing, easy because of international capitalism's hope to ensure the stability of the area, made it possible to continue importing without a balance of payments crisis.

But while the bourgeoisie and sections of the better-off petty bourgeoisie grew rich on state loans, import permits, political gratt, etc., Greek society was in turmoil, even if in a more silent and concealed way than in the 1940s.

Most import agencies, profits, investments, luxuries, etc., were concentrated in Athens, with the and student struggles, is not the material that the demagogues are finding easy to hoodwink.

The CMU by its very composition and makeup benefits by the influx of new recruits with this background. The combination of these with the experienced political and trade-union cadres of the union and now the inflow of the finest militants of the semi-skilled and unskilled urban workers, Will mean a qualitative change in the trade union movement of Ceylon.

Above all, it will provide for the first time a stable working-class base for the development of a truly representative party of the working class, a party which will make a decisive break with the politics of Pabloism as it has expressed itself in the past history of the LSSP.

Leadership change

Already, new sections of workers, organised in the public service sectors, state-sponsored industries and new private industries, are voting with their feet for a change of leadership.

This means—in terms of the harrowing experiences of past: communal (racist-pogrom) politics, endemic rationing of the essentials of life, the black coups market, a permanent emergerand assassinations-essentially a new revolutionary Marxist leadership.

The ingredients of this already exist in the leadership of this union, which, despite the multifarious allegiances of its membership, is able to achieve absolute unanimity in the the conduct of its struggle against the imperialists and their various agencies in the labour movement.

The secretary of the union, P. Bala Tampoe, and the assistant secretary are members of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (Revolutionary, along with many other branch officials.

Far-reaching

The issues in this strike are of more far-reaching consequences than the immediate issues at stake. The ruling class senses this and is moving with great caution. Behind the scenes, the reformists and Stalinists would rather cut their noses to spite the image of the CMU.

On the other hand, the union has the sympathy of ever-increasing numbers of the working class and the lower middle class. Many eyes are focussed on this contest.

Earlier this year a major part of the Ceylon plantation workers received a severe set-back in an eight-week strike. This was in large measure due to the anti-strike attitude of a rival union on the plantations, and inadequate leadership on the part of the union involved.

But if the employers' front is successfully breached, the CMU could sweep the trade union field clear.

Since the stakes are high, this struggle could be a long and bitter fight to the finish. The union leadership has warned the membership of the prospect of such a struggle. The working class has no choice but to fight it through to the end.