Trade Unions And Politics In Ceylon

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1971.

Based on a section of the author's thesis, University of London.

Based on extensive original research, this book examines the challenges confronting trade unions in the global South, by focusing on trade union struggles in Sri Lanka under neo-liberal globalisation. It centres on movement politics of unions; explains union capacities to mobilise workers as a part of broad counter movement; and specifies worker struggles in Sri Lanka. The author identifies key dimensions of variation in the approaches taken by oppositional groupings, in particular unions, other labour organisations and the labour movement, and locates those variations in a larger theoretical context. Three case studies on trade unions in tea plantations, garment factories and among the nurses show how these theoretical dimensions operate in practice, and the consequences for the sort of opposition that is (and is not) created. The book contributes to the on-going debate on social movement unionism, and it also reveals their gaps in terms of addressing how class injustices are mediated through ethno-nationalist projects reproducing ethnic and gender hierarchies. It acknowledges the diversity of experiences and forms of resistance in the global South and critically engages with issues of gender, ethnicity and labour internationalism, providing a useful contribution to studies on South Asian Politics as well as Labour and Development Studies.

"'Class, Patriarchy and Ethnicity on Sri Lankan Plantations' takes as its central theme the plantations of Sri Lanka, from their inception in the early nineteenth century to almost the present day in the twenty-first. Drawing on a wealth of archival material, it offers a detailed and compelling empirical narrative of the lives and struggles of plantation workers, who have constituted, for much of modern Sri Lankan history, the single largest organised workforce in the country. In doing so, it explores the complex links between power and class, gender and ethnic hierarchies both on the plantations and outside and crucially situates the labour movement on the plantations within the wider political and social economy of Sri Lanka. The current volume begins by tracing the origins of the plantations in then Ceylon, the acquisition of Indian Tamil workers and the labour practices during the colonial period. This in turn contextualises the subsequent discussion on rising labour and political consciousness among plantation workers and their struggles for labour and democratic rights, which the authors track through the post-Independence period and into the twenty-first century. Particular attention is paid to the role of political parties, trade unions and other pressure groups in supporting or opposing these rights, within a background of class, ethnic, linguistic and nationalist consciousness and chauvinism. The book provides an astute analysis of the strategic alliances and political manoeuvres made by the various actors in this struggle. This volume offers readers a truly integrated history of the labour movement on Sri Lankan plantations. It balances an empirically rich narrative with a nuanced analysis of the class, ethnic, linguistic and political consciousness that has informed and opposed the struggles of plantation labour on the island." -- Provided by publisher's website.