The trade union bureaucracy are fearful that the rising working-class opposition to Colombo’s austerity policies will rekindle the mass anti-government movement that ousted President Rajapakse and his regime in 2022.
The HWAC is calling on health employees to fight for the mobilisation of workers to defeat the government’s paying ward plan, which is aimed at wiping out Sri Lanka’s public health system, a fundamental gain won by the working class.
Unions betray Sri Lankan health workers’ strike
An indefinite strike launched on Monday by around 25,000 health workers across Sri Lanka was shut down by the trade unions the next day, without any of their demands being met. The strikers were from more than 15 supplementary medicine and paramedical services, including lab technicians, public health inspectors, midwives, pharmacists, radiographers and therapists.
The Joint Council for Professions of Supplementary Medicine (JCPSM) and the Para Medical Service Front called the strike over 14 demands. These included professional and risk allowances, staff grade positions with a legitimate promotion system and the easing of workloads. The strike was called off after Health Minister Pavithra Wanniarachchi made a hollow promise to submit a “cabinet paper” on the unions’ demands next Monday.
Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and New Zealand
4 June 2021
India: Punjab state administration workers strike
Striking workers from the Punjab State District Commissioner’s (DC) Office in Fatehgarh Sahib demonstrated outside the DC Office building on May 28 over several long outstanding demands. They chanted slogans denouncing the revenue minister and the chief minister and burnt an effigy. The workers had been on casual leave since May 24 in support of their demands.
The DC Office Employees Union is demanding implementation of the 6th Pay Commission recommendations, payment of outstanding dearness allowances, promotions and restoration of the previous pension system. Workers said 55 percent of positions in the DC offices were vacant but management had made no move to recruit workers.
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COLOMBO (News1st): Nurses have not been provided COVID-19 vaccines, H.M.S.B. Medawatte, the General Secretary of the All Ceylon Nurses Union has said.
“…not a single nurse has been provided even the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine by the health ministry,” Medawatte claimed.
Bimal Rathnayake, the national organizer of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna pointed out that the government is controlling the rate of PCR tests as a “political tactic”.
“They couldn’t administer the vaccines that were received free of charge, based on an internationally accepted mechanism,” Rathnayake noted.
He likened the effectiveness of the government’s administration to the Dhammika tonic.