The Ceylon Federation of Labour (CFL) has accused President Gotabaya Rajapaksa of “clandestinely” undertaking a program of labour reforms through the Ministry of Justice “to set, what is euphemistically called, a conducive environment for investment, especially Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).”

In a statement iussued last week, CFL General Secretary TMR Rasseedin said that these changes are sought to be made through the justice ministry usurping the functions of the labour ministry and called upon the government to abandon these ongoing efforts.

“At the very outset it has to be categorically stated that the mandate the government received from the country at the last Presidential and Parliamentary Elections did not include labour law reforms and that too with the assistance of a foreign agency with questionable antecedents.

“Labour reforms find no mention in President Rajapaksa’s Manifesto ‘Saubagya Dekma’. We are astonished to find that the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has been engaged to review labour laws with the assistance of USAID, sans involvement of the Ministry of Labour and relevant stakeholders.”

Such an exercise, if at all, should be handled by the Ministry of Labour (MoL) and not by any other agency and, by doing so, the MoJ is usurping the role and responsibilities of the MoL to oversee matters involving labour in the country, the statement said.

“We hold the view that the MoL and the Department of Labour (DoL) hold the sole responsibility to manage issues related to labour in the country and oppose such interference by outside authorities. Previous attempts to promote such reforms catering to employer demands have been successfully beaten back by trade unions.

“In 2017 during the Yahapalana period, the then Minister of Labour abdicated his role and acquiesced in allowing the Ministry of Development Strategies & International Trade, with the assistance of some surrogate unions and the USAID to initiate labour reforms which were stymied in time by a strong protest by the overwhelming majority of unions in the National Labour Advisory Council (NLAC), the statement said.

“This project is now being revived under the MOJ whose Minister recently earned notoriety for some uncalled for remarks on strikes, exposing the limits of his knowledge of not only international law but also our own National Workers Charter which continues to govern our labour relations. It has to be stated that unless otherwise officially retracted, the National Workers Charter constitutes the policy framework that regulates labour affairs in the country.

“We urge the Minister of Justice to take stock of the ground reality before he ventures into unfamiliar terrains such as labour reforms. In an evidence-based comparison of labour market regulations vis-a-vis FDI, CFL has found out that there is no empirical evidence to justify the type of labour law regime that capital is seeking to advance in order to enhance its profit.

“The statistics obtained by the CFL covers key East and South Asian economies such as Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, China, Myanmar, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and Nepal with which Sri Lanka is in competition to attract FDIs for export-based manufacturing industries.

“The labour markets of some of these countries are often quoted by local authorities and some policy advocates as ideally positioned for the inflow of FDIs. As verifiably evidence from the online statistical base of the Doing Business 2019 World Bank Report, labour market regulation in Sri Lanka is clearly the worst or far below average when compared with the above key regional economies “

This was in respect of matters such as Minimum Wages Statutory protection in hiring i.e. probation periods, fixed term contracts etc as well as many others, CFL said.

It said the present Minister of Labour sought to give a more precise definition to the different employment categories such as Fixed Term, etc. when he gazetted the Minimum Retirement Age of Workers Bill on 12.10.21.

“However, during its passage through Parliament, we saw the Interpretation Clause being reworked to appease employer interests. The CFL understands that the main focus of the MoJ-USAID inspired labour law reform agenda is to further whittle down clauses from our statutes such as these which protect workers and thereby pave the way for a race towards the bottom.,” the statement said.

“The politically ill-advised and cronyism-driven present exercise of the MoJ under the aegis of a foreign government development agency with a questionable political record has to be stymied before it further degrades the labour laws of the country, which even today is way below average for the region.”

The Ceylon Federation of Labour urged the government “to abandon this clandestine project without stirring unrest among the working class that may well turn out to be calamitous for the government.”