| by Panini Wijesiriwardane
( October 16, 2012, Colombo, Sri
Lanka Guardian ) The Federation of University Teachers Associations (FUTA) in
Sri Lanka has betrayed a three-month long strike, caving in to government
pressure on Thursday. The strike was called off without achieving any of the
academic staff’s demands.
About 4,000 teachers from 14
universities took part in the industrial action that began on July 4. They
demanded a 20 percent wage rise and an increase in government spending on
education to 6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).
After a series of closed-door
meetings with cabinet ministers and education officials, FUTA officials
accepted the government’s worthless “assurances”. The union claimed that a
letter written by Treasury Secretary P.B. Jayasundera ensured the finance
ministry’s commitment to the teachers’ wage demands. His letter, however,
merely stated that “the government will give due consideration to address
remuneration-related concerns expressed by FUTA ... within a 5-year medium term
framework commencing from 2013 budget.”
This letter is consistent with
the stance taken by President Mahinda Rajapakse’s government since the
beginning of the industrial campaign, and commits it to nothing. Moreover, it
made no assurances whatsoever about increasing public education expenditure.
FUTA president Nirmal Ranjith
Dewasiri and other union officials initially agreed to participate in a joint
press conference to announce the deal, alongside Economic Development Minister
Basil Rajapakse, the president’s brother, and Higher Education Minister S. B.
Dissanayake. However, expecting bitter opposition among academics, a section of
the union’s executive committee decided to hold a separate media conference in
an obvious attempt to avoid appearing too close to the government.
Dewasiri nevertheless signed a
joint statement with Basil Rajapakse that made clear the union had sold out the
strike in return for a more central role in implementing the government’s
right-wing tertiary education “reforms”.
The joint statement endorsed the
Rajapakse administration’s goal of “making Sri Lanka a hub of knowledge of
South Asia”—a phrase that serves as a cover for the promotion of private
universities. The document referred to university faculty boards and senate
committees helping approve the provision of “university resources for the usage
of private institutes.”
Similarly, the government-union
statement insisted that the university bodies would determine the form of new
“Leadership Training”—a compulsory four-week military training course for new
university students that the government announced last year.
Union president Dewasiri admitted
that the teachers’ demands had not been met. But he insisted that the
government’s admission that there were problems in the education sector was a
“most important achievement”. He added that the submission of a cabinet
memorandum proposing recognition of university academics as a distinct
professional category marked “a victory”.
The union bureaucrat shamelessly
praised Basil Rajapakse. “I do not hesitate to thank Minister Rajapakse,” he
declared, for providing an “opportunity to have a serious discussion”.
Dewasiri indicated that the FUTA
leadership had never been serious about the demand for increased education
spending. The union president declared the demand had merely been “symbolic”
and did not “form the crux of trade union demands during discussions”.
The Nation reported Dewasiri as
saying that a trade union action “cannot go on forever” and had to end with a
“compromise”. He added that there were “two dimensions” to FUTA’s campaign—the
trade union action, that had ended, and a “mass campaign” for higher education
spending, that was ongoing. FUTA spokesman Mahim Mendis declared: “This is not
a permanent exit but a temporary suspension of a historic struggle. We will
continue with greater determination and expect the government to fulfil what
they had agreed to.”
The agreement reached between
FUTA and the government is not a compromise, but a complete capitulation by the
union. Likewise FUTA’s claim that the “historic struggle” has only been suspended
is a lie, aimed at defusing the widespread hostility among FUTA members to the
sellout. The union leadership, hostile to the democratic rights of the
university teachers, has not even placed its deal before the union membership
for a vote in favour or against.
The so-called opposition parties
all stand exposed by the FUTA sellout. All of them—ranging from the United
National Party, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna and the Frontline Socialist
Party, to the ex-lefts of the Nava Sama Samaja Party and the United Socialist
Party—supported the union bureaucracy during the strike. Virtually all of them
remained silent since the betrayal.
The only exception has been JVP
secretary Tilwin Silva who in an interview with Lankadeepa, justified the
betrayal and the union’s failure to take a vote of members. “We all know that a
strike cannot go forward indefinitely,” he said. Silva insisted that there was
no alternative but to surrender to the government in the face of its threats.
From the outset of the strike,
the FUTA leadership, and the political parties that backed it, did everything
possible to prevent the emergence of a political struggle against the
government.
The Socialist Equality Party
(SEP) repeatedly warned university teachers and other workers about the role
being played by the union. A statement issued on September 25, “Support the
struggle of Sri Lankan university teachers” explained:
“The SEP calls on workers and
youth to take action of their own to back the teachers as part of the broadest
possible campaign to defend living standards. This necessarily involves a
political struggle against the government of President Mahinda Rajapakse and
the Colombo political establishment as a whole. We warn that the leaders of the
trade union involved—the Federation of University Teachers Associations
(FUTA)—are fundamentally opposed to such a perspective and, as a result, will
capitulate to the Rajapakse government and sell out the strike.”
The SEP pointed out that the
demands of university teachers could not be realised under the Rajapakse
administration or any other capitalist government. Rajapakse and his
colleagues, like their counterparts around the world, are ruthlessly
implementing an austerity agenda aimed at making the working class bear the
burden of the global economic crisis.
The SEP urged teachers to take
their struggle out of the hands of the FUTA leadership, organise rank-and-file
committees and turn out to other sections of the working class facing attacks
on jobs, wages and conditions. As with other social and democratic rights,
teachers’ demands will be won only through a broad political struggle for a
workers’ and peasants’ government committed to implementing socialist policies.
 The Federation of University Teachers Associations (...){kind=link}