Sri Lankan public sector workers launch nationwide industrial action over wage increases

July 11, 2024

About one million Sri Lankan civil servants staged a two-day nationwide sickness strike on July 8 and 9 to protest against cuts in government spending and demand higher monthly salaries. They were joined by about 250,000 public school teachers on July 9. The strike, called by over 200 trade unions, brought most day-to-day activities in government offices and schools to a halt.

Public service protesters in front of the Ministry of Public Administration on July 8, 2024

The participants included development officials, surveyors, village officials, state administration and Samurdhi Bank employees, educationists, postal employees, agriculture inspectors and some health workers. Some retired government employees also participated in the protests.

In another development, nearly 1,000 station masters and line controllers went on strike on Tuesday to demand long-overdue promotions. Yesterday, the Wickremesinghe government said the rail strikers had “vacated their posts”, having only recently invoked the Essential Public Services Act (EPSA) to ban all transport strikes. The Sri Lanka Station Masters’ Union (SLRSMU) responded by declaring that its strike would continue indefinitely.

Employees of the Ministry of Public Administration, most of them organized by the State and Provincial Public Service Unions Collective (SPPSUC), held protests in Colombo and major cities in other provinces on Monday and Tuesday. The SPPSUC is demanding a promotion program and a monthly allowance of 25,000 rupees (US$82), equivalent to the allowances already paid to public sector executives.

More than 20,000 postal workers from over 4,700 post offices also participated in the two-day protest. They are demanding the filling of all vacancies, permanent positions for temporary workers and promotions. They are organized in several unions organized in the Postal Unions Joint Front (PTUJF).

Educators who joined the campaign on Tuesday are demanding payment of a long-overdue salary increase and condemning the brutal police attack on protesting teachers in Colombo on June 26. Members of the Health Trade Unions Alliance also staged a four-hour strike outside several hospitals on Tuesday to demand standby and travel allowances.

Public administration employees demonstrate in front of the District Secretariat in Galle, July 9, 2024

Despite efforts by union leaderships to contain these struggles, this week’s strikes show that the working class is increasingly fighting against the Wickremesinghe government’s austerity program dictated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which includes reducing the budget deficit, increasing government revenues and privatizing or commercializing state-owned enterprises to pay off external debt and increase profits for big corporations.

Many unions have held limited protests over the past year demanding wage increases and creating the illusion that these could be achieved by pressuring the government. But they remained silent when President Wickremesinghe announced a monthly budgetary allowance of Rs 10,000 this year – a wholly inadequate amount to offset the sharp declines in real wages since 2020.

Faced with workers’ growing anger, union bureaucracies were forced to call this week’s action. Some union officials called it a “general strike,” reiterating that it would put pressure on the government. But apart from isolated symbolic protests of several hundred people in different cities, they did not organize a unified action and called on strikers to stay home, avoiding any political confrontation with the government, which insists on not granting wage increases or bonuses.

During a protest rally in Colombo on Monday, SPPSUC co-organizer Chandana Sooriyarachchi told the media that the government should neither delay nor reject their demands. If it does not do so, “this sick leave campaign will be extended” to unite all workers in further “joint action.” The government should not “underestimate the power of the working people,” he declared demagogically.

Ceylon Teachers Union General Secretary Joseph Stalin said the government must “provide sufficient funds from the budget for teachers” and threatened: “If not, we will fight together.”

The trade union bureaucracies, in unison with the capitalist parties to which they belong, fully support the draconian policies of the IMF. Their attacks on the President and his government are nothing more than hot air to deceive their members.

On Tuesday, Wickremesinghe and his top officials told the media that the finance ministry would need to raise an additional Rs 275 billion to provide a monthly allowance of Rs 20,000 to civil servants. This would require an increase in value-added tax (VAT) of 2 to 3 percent on top of the current rate of 18 percent, they said.

At a public meeting, Wickremesinghe stressed: “We cannot do that. That would require us to increase VAT again, and people cannot bear that.”

At the same time, the Cabinet approved his proposal to give a pay rise to all workers who worked during the two-day strike. They would also be given a “certificate of commendation” which would count towards their merits for promotions. This crude attempt to pit workers against each other is unlikely to have any effect, as the number of workers who turned up for work during the two-day strike was negligible.

Yesterday, Transport and Highways Minister Bandula Gunawardena told Parliament that this week’s strikes were aimed at launching “another aragalaya (struggle)” to “destabilise the country” and accused the striking station masters and line managers of “union terrorism”. “Another struggle” was a deliberate reference to the April-May 2022 mass uprising against former President Gotabhaya Rajapakse and his government.

This movement forced Rajapakse to resign, but was betrayed by the union leadership, which was supported by the pseudo-left Frontline Socialist Party, which subordinated the workers to the opposition parties in parliament, which fought to establish a capitalist caretaker government.

Although the unions warn the government not to “underestimate the power of the working class”, they themselves, like their masters, the ruling capitalist class, fear a mass uprising of the working class and are doing their utmost to block and demobilise such a movement.

Wickremesinghe’s invocation of EPSA against station masters and similar threats against protesting teachers are a stark warning to the working class.

This week’s national industrial action underscores the need for a unified labour and political programme to defeat government austerity and repression. It also shows that such a struggle can only succeed if workers take matters into their own hands. They cannot rely on the unions to lead the way.

This means the formation of independent action committees in all workplaces, on the plantations and in poor urban and rural communities. There must be no place for pro-capitalist trade union bureaucracies in these democratically controlled committees.

The Socialist Equality Party has called on the working class to prepare a political general strike against the Wickremesinghe government and its austerity policies. Within the profit system, there is no way to defend the social and democratic rights of the working class and rural population.

Instead of obeying the government’s lies that higher wages must be financed through VAT or other brutal tax increases, what is needed is the abolition of foreign debt and the confiscation of the vast wealth of the wealthy elites. These steps can only be taken by bringing the banks, big corporations and plantations under the democratic control of the working class.

Such a struggle can be organised through the struggle to build a democratic and socialist congress of workers and peasants, based on delegates elected by workers’ action committees. This would pave the way for a united movement to overthrow the Wickremesinghe regime and the capitalist system and establish a workers’ and peasants’ government based on a socialist and internationalist programme.