RIGHTS-SRI LANKA: Traders Forced to Bargain with ‘Docile’ Workers

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Jan 18 2000 (IPS) - For decades headload workers of Indian origin have staggered through the dusty and dirty streets and alleys of the wholesale and retail trade in the Sri Lankan capital carrying heavy loads on their bare backs.

Old Moor Street in Pettah, the heart of Colombo’s wholesale and retail business, buzzes with activity — the loading and unloading of hundreds of trucks bound for all parts of the country, is done through the day by “natamies” or headload workers.

Business has gone on without interruption or work stoppages. But the unthinkable happened two weeks ago — some 1,000 natamies in the Old Moor Street area went on strike, demanding higher wages for the back-breaking work they do.

Paid individually, the rates vary from one rupee to three and a half rupees (one US dollar is roughly 60 Sri Lankan rupees) for carrying loads between 10 and 50 kgs from trucks to shops or warehouses. The natamies demanded the rates should be doubled.

Business circles were stunned by the rebellion. Paid poorly for very hard work, they always appeared docile like their forefathers who were brought from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu by British colonial rulers to work on plantations of tea and coconut in central Sri Lanka.

“We are in a desperate plight. The cost of living is unbearable and we have not had an increase in our rates since 1996,” said 30-year-old Michael Paul, a young coolie with three school-going children, who led the protest.

“Our families are asking for more. So what are we do to?” he asked.

Previously, the workers’ request for wage hikes, made once in three years, or even annually, was generally granted by the traders without a fuss. This time around a plea by workers some three months ago, was not immediately looked into in view of the presidential elections in late December, and the following holiday season.

“I don’t see any problem in resolving this issue,” asserts Palaniyandy Sunderam, president of the Old Moor Street Traders’ Association, whose parents were also tea plantation workers. “If these natamies had given us adequate notice we could have amicably sorted the matter.”

The protestors had issued notices to some 300-odd shops on Old Moore Street, appealing for higher rates for unloading and loading work from Jan.1. But the traders chose to ignore the appeal, which led to the surprise strike on Jan. 4.

When shops opened at 7, and the trucks lined up on the streets, traders who were braced for another busy day at work were in for a shock. The porters — a vital cog in Pettah’s wholesale business wheel — were missing, and the traders, for whom every minute’s delay is loss of money, panicked.

Sunderam’s office phones kept ringing with traders asking him to intervene. He summoned a meeting of traders and ‘coolies’ at 10.30 am where — after a lot of shouting and arguments — it was decided that the traders would negotiate a settlement and offer new rates in 10 days time.

“I promised the coolies (natamies) that we would favourably look into their demands. They were satisfied and went back to work by 1 pm in the afternoon,” Sunderam said. On Jan. 14 — after a four-hour meeting between traders and coolies, it was decided that rates would increase by between one and one a half rupees.

Sunderam said his fellow traders were unable to raise wages any higher because of the recession in their business. Business worth millions of rupees — some hazard 300 million rupees — are transacted daily on Old Moore Street.

Many of the traders work in plush, high-tech air-conditioned offices, while the headload workers live in tiny hovels around Pettah, and work on the street, under the sharp tropical sun and monsoon downpours. “We lost money on the day of the strike,” says Paul. “But we had to do something desperate like that to draw attention (to how we live).”

The older generation of workers, however, very reluctantly joined the strike. Devsagar Sami, 58, says “we could have used other ways of ensuring traders raise their rates.”

The strike brought the workers’ centre-stage. Suddenly their stories of struggle on the streets of Pettah are being written about in the media. Paul and Sami are typical of the headload workers, joining the profession of their fathers and grandfathers.

They ean a pittance for work that begins at 6 am and ends close to 10 pm, or even at midnight, depending on the availability of work. Average daily earnings are never more than 100 rupees, with which the family buys the day’s food provisions. Sometimes the money gets spent on alcohol.

Both Paul and Sami are adamant their children will not be ‘natamies’. “They would — and I hope — they will find better jobs where they can improve the quality of their lives,” said Paul who is saving as much as he can to ensure his children receive a basic education at least.

His children go to a nearby school run by Christian nuns, and he says proudly that they are good in studies.

“Paul’s and Sami’s children are not going to do the same street jobs. Things are changing nowadays and like the children of estate labour, who are seeking jobs out of the estates, these children also want to do something different,” admits Sunderam who too has risen from rags to riches in one generation..

“Whoever thought I would have a mobile phone and a fax machine. Things are changing and I see this change happening in Old Moor Street too,” he adds.