Landmark victory in workers’ rights

Wijitha NAKKAWITA

May Day this year falls after 120 years of the Haymarket riot in Chicago USA where workers agitating for an 8 hour day were killed by hired thugs of the employers. Since then much water had flowed under the bridge with different Socialist and Trade Union organizations striving to win workers who had no rights but whatever their employers decided to give them or deny them.

Massacre

The International Socialist Conference in Amsterdam in 1894, five years after the Chicago massacre called upon all socialist parties and trade unions to stop work on May 1, to mark the day of the attempt to win the eight hour working day. In 1934 our own country’s Labour Federation led by the Trade Union Leader A.E. Goonesinha held a May Day rally though it was not a public holiday at that time. Since he had the support of the working class of Colombo he was able to organize the May Day.

The Left political parties the Lanka Sama Samaja Party and the Communist Party demanded that the May Day should be made a public holiday but successive Prime Minsters after D.S.Senanayake did not allow the public holiday by then celebrated as the International Workers Day in a large number of countries of the world. Those in power in that era attempted to show that Trade Unions as mischief makers and were not well disposed towards the working class. Trade unions and the workers therefore had to act very cautiously and in secrecy most of the times with Governments and employers adopting a hostile attitude towards Trade Unions.

However the election victory of the MEP in 1956 with the strong support from the working class, the left political parties and the intelligentsia was the turning point in the affairs and status quo of the Trade Unions and the working class.

Strike

The Labour Minister of the MEP Government T.B. Illangaratne himself was Trade Unionist who had been sacked by a previous Government for taking part and playing a leading role in the general strike of public servants. When he proposed to the Cabinet to make the May Day a public holiday the proposal met with approval of the Prime Minister S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike and May Day was made a public holiday in 1956. Thereafter the Working Class and the Left political parties held May Day rallies and demonstrations at a grand scale and in the late 1970s the UNP also began to hold their own rallies.