30.6.75

NTUC: Reprisal against non-members

The national Trades Union Congress yesterday urged Union leaders to "deliberately" plan welfare benefit and other schemes that would prevent anti-union workers from enjoying them.

Describing these workers as "the self-declared elite group of the working class," NTUC's secretary for organisation, Mr V Jayakody stressed that no compassion should be felt for this group who should be "discreetly" excluded from union achievements.

In spite of massive efforts to organise workers into unions affiliated to the NTUC, there are several wage earners who have chosen to remain outside the union fold.

"These are self-declared elite groups of the working-class and they come mainly from the white collar groups such as clerical staff, teachers, commercial house employees and port-workers.

"Better welfare benefits and practical undertakings of the union must be carefully charted out and deliberately designed so that anti-unionists would have cause to regret opting out of the unions."

In graceless, arrogant attempts to boost its membership, the pro-government NTUC bureaucrats have resorted to threats, lies, promise of material benefits for members and reprisal against non-union members. If NTUC is truly fighting for, and championing the workers' cause, there would be no need to employ these low-down techniques. The working class on realising the advantages of being members will willingly join on their own accord.

In this time of economic recession, massive retrenchments of workers are daily being carried out. The workers confronted with their survival problem are fighting back with industrial actions, which NTUC bureaucrats always try to avoid. In a frenzy to please its capitalist masters, the NTUC bureaucrats are even more desperate to impose a tighter control over the labour force, hence their recent gangster tactics. And the sheer hypocrisy behind it all, V. Jayakody was recently awarded a "Friends of Labour" gold medal!!!! (S.T., 29.6.75)