Last week the largest plantation union, Ceylon Workers Congress (CWC), signed an agreement with employers binding half a million workers in Sri Lanka’s tea, rubber and coconut plantations to a poverty-level daily wage of just 405 rupees ($US3.50) for the next two years. Two allied unions—the Lanka Jathika Estate Workers Union (LJEWU) and the Joint Plantation Trade Union Alliance (JPTUA)—quickly followed suit.
Workers from several tea estates, who spoke to the WSWS, angrily condemned the deal and all of the unions, including those that nominally claimed to oppose it. In 2006, when the CWC signed a similar sell-out, those unions that opposed the agreement, such as the Up-country Peoples Front (UPF), rapidly caved into government demands to end all strike action and accept the deal. More...
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