Sri Lanka Balmoral Estate Workers set up an Action Committee

In a historical initiative in the workers struggle in Sri Lanka the recent plantation workers strike paved the way for the setting up an independent Action Committee, by the workers of the Balmoral Estate in Agarapathana, free from all established trade Unions in the country, with the political support of the Socialist Equality Party, Sri Lanka.

In Sri Lanka almost every trade union is affiliated with a political party and especially majority of them are controlled by the ruling United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) and even the extreme rightwing opposition United National Party(UNP) has its own trade unions. These unions win nothing for the workers and they are just built up for backing governments of these two political parties who have governed this island after the independence in 1948.  

The recent strike which lasted for about two weeks and for which hundreds and thousands of plantation workers participated was for demanding wage increase upto Rs. 750 per day. This amount was a demand since 2006 and this strike at last resulted in the desperate signing of a collective agreement with the employers for a poverty-level daily wage of Rs.405.

The Ceylon Workers Congress (CWC), The Up-country Peoples Front (UPF) and All Ceylon Plantation Workers Union (ACPWU) though took part in the strike to win over the workers, have always been in guard of government interests against living conditions of the working people. The leaders of the CWC and the UPF are ministers of the President Rajapakshe’s government.

This action by the Balmoral Estate workers has a greater historical significance for all workers in the island and internationally in view of the betrayals of the established trade unions throughout the world nation state system. As Marx himself and Marxists like Lenin, Trotsky and Cannon have correctly pointed out, the trade unions have developed into an apparatus for pacifying workers in making meager adjustments to the living conditions of the bourgeoisie ruling class in the ages of capitalist meltdown. It is in this context that workers should cut totally off from al forms of Trade Unions and fight independently with a perspective of International Socialism under the leadership of a world socialist party, which has no national limitations. Establishing Action Committees in the type of former “Soviets” is therefore is a must.

Sisuhanda call upon all workers, youth and students in the country and internationally to identify the great significance of this vanguard initiative by the Balmoral Estate workers and follow this example. Capitalism is impotent; its failure is long lasting; it brings nothing but misery and so join fight against capitalism. This necessitates not mere radicalism, but a deeper study of Marxist Political Economy of Capitalism and a conscious programmatic struggle for Socialist Internationalism.