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Alton Estate workers in Sri Lanka confront harsh and worsening social conditions
The ongoing company witch hunt against Alton Estate workers near Maskeliya began early this year in response to workers’ determination to win better wages and improved living conditions. The Alton workers, who walked out on February 2, participated in a one-day national plantation workers’ strike three days later and continued their industrial action until March 22 in protest against estate management harassment.
Twenty-four workers and two youth were then framed up by the company and the police, aided and abetted by the Ceylon Workers’ Congress (CWC), on false accusations of physically assaulting the estate’s managers. These workers now face a criminal court trial. The Horana Plantation Company, which runs Alton Estate, has sacked a total of 38 workers, including those to be tried, without conducting any investigation or allowing any right of appeal against its dictates.
The SEP leads the fight against company, police and union witch-hunt of Sri Lankan plantation workers
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to build rank-and-file committees
He made these remarks
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Comrades,
As part of the developing class struggle globally, working class struggles are emerging in Sri Lanka, India and the rest of South Asia.
Hundreds of thousands of plantation workers in Sri Lanka took strike action on February 5 demanding a daily wage increase to 1,000 rupees [about $US5]. The Ceylon Workers’ Congress (CWC), the main plantation union, a partner of the government of President Gotabhaya Rajapakse, did not call this action to mobilise workers against the government and plantation companies, but to let off steam under conditions of mounting anger among the workers over the companies’ refusal to accept even a meagre rise in daily wages.