By Sanath Rathnaweera
COLOMBO – 170,000 out of Sri Lanka’s 200,000 teachers took part in a one day strike action on September 13th, that was provoked by the country’s reactionary government.
As the long term problem of anomalies of wages faced by the teachers was not solved by the government, five major teacher unions, namely Lanka Teachers Union, All Ceylon United Teachers Union, Union of Educational Professionals, Ceylon Teachers Service Union and the Union of Agricultural Science and Diploma holders banded together to take this action in order to get this prolonged problem solved.
This problem which goes back as long as 1997 had been the subject of negotiations between the government and the Unions of Teachers, but the government had turned a deaf ear to it.
As a last resort the unions decided to boycott the monitoring of the answer scripts of the Advanced Level 2007 August examination which was due to commence on the 20th of August.
This boycott became a great success despite all the attempts made by the government using the government allied Teachers Unions media and even the commissioner of the examinations himself to intimidate teachers.
The examiners who had been terrified by the policemen who had come to their homes overnight, were even more frightened.
Irrespective of all types of pleadings as well as threats made by the government, this effort ended in an utter failure.
So the government turned to the court of Sri Lanka and got an ordinance preventing the strike launched by the teachers.
The five Teachers Unions called for a one day token strike of Teachers on the 13th of September and more than 170,000 teachers took part.
This is indeed an excellent number as the whole teaching population of Sri Lanka amounts only up to 200,000 in number.
Following the boycott,The court levelled allegations against the leaders of the unions for insulting the court and they were summoned to the court.
They were bailed out for Rs.50,000 each and the court ordered them to issue a statement giving up the boycott.
This procedure of the court seemed to affect the union activists negatively and following this The Unity of Teachers Union made an announcement asking the examiners of all papers to go to the appreciation centres.
Teachers were discouraged by the decision taken by the union leaders.
Although the government was victorious in sabotaging the boycott which was launched by the teachers, the teachers were able to show their strength in their strike action which had not been demonstrated through out their disciplined history.
In addition to this shameless action taken by the government to try to overcome the teacher’s struggle another court order is still in progress to sabotage the strike launched by the railway workers to win their extremely reasonable demands.
The same judicial procedure is being misused by the employers of the private sector as well, to desist from giving the just and fair demands of the workers.
On the 3rd of October 2007, members of more than 50 unions gathered in front of the Colombo Port Railway station and held a protest rally in order to vehemently condemn the actions taken by the government against the working class.
These attacks violated the basic human rights accepted by international charters such as the right to organise and the right to collective bargaining.
Meanwhile, the alliance of the five teachers unions declared an international Teachers Day of Mourning and urged all the teachers to hoist black flags at every school on the due date.
However these failures were distinctly caused by the lack of a strong leadership with correct vision for teachers.
There is a need for a National Centre of Unions with an accurate and wider perspective that can lead the working class towards victory.