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| Sunday, 23 November 2003 |
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| News Business Features Editorial
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One-day strike by mercantile workers by P. KRISHNASWAMY All members of the Ceylon Mercantile, Industrial and General Workers' Union (CWU) will stage a one day general stoppage of work on December 3, in protest against " the Government's anti-working class policies". General Secretary of the CMU, Bala Tampoe, told the "Sunday Observer" that this protest action by the Union is " against the Government policies, in pursuance of which amendments to various existing labour laws have already been passed by Parliament, while further amendments are likely to be presented in the near future, which are clearly designed to deny existing legal protection of workers, entirely for the benefit of their employers". Several companies have already taken full advantage of the situation, with hundreds of CMU members already been thrown out of employment by subsidiaries of transnational companies, while a similar threat was being faced by the CMU members of a factory in Ratmalana, Mr. Tampoe said. He cited instances where a leading industrial concern had dismissed TV technicians, in clear breach of the Union's Collective Agreement, that a lubricant company was recruiting employees through contractors on daily pay to do the work of monthly paid workers, who are union members. A Bill presented in Parliament by the Minister of Housing and Plantation Infrastructure on September 24 posed an extremely grave danger to the people of the country since the Bill, if passed, would transfer water management to private operators making water itself a commercial commodity subject to arbitrary price increases, he said. At a general membership meeting at the union headquarters on December 3, a decision on these matters would be taken, Tampoe said. |
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