Claiming that the Director General (DG) of Trade Unions (TUs) to President Ranil Wickremesinghe, Saman Rathnapriya, whose primary responsibility is to provide solutions to trade unions' issues through proper negotiations, is continuously humiliating and undermining trade unions to please the Wickremesinghe-led Government, the College of Medical Laboratory Science (CMLS) stated that the same will result in the exacerbation of trade union actions against the Government.
“The duty of the DG – Trade Unions is to study the issues of trade unions and have negotiations with them. Then, he should discuss the outcome of such negotiations with the President and provide us with solutions. His duty is not to please the President and the Government. However, Rathnapriya is continuously saying that our trade union action on Wednesday (1) was unsuccessful. His actions will result in nothing but the exacerbation of our trade union actions. If he says that our actions are unsuccessful, we are ready to show him our strength," said CMLS President, Ravi Kumudesh while speaking to The Daily Morning.
He also said that President Wickremesinghe should understand the fact that he is being misled by Rathnapriya and a few trade unions which are affiliated to the United National Party (UNP) led by Wickremesinghe.
“We request the President not to get misled by these parties. What he should do is to understand our issues, discuss them, and try to provide solutions as soon as possible. If he is trying to show that the trade unions are not strong by using his henchmen, it will be extremely disadvantageous for him,” added Kumudesh.
The trade unions belonging to the ports, petroleum, electricity, health, water supply and education sectors implemented a number of trade union actions including strikes and work to rule campaigns, seeking to force the Government to revoke the recently introduced tax policies, on Wednesday. They claimed that their trade union actions were successful, and warned of stricter trade union actions including continuous strikes within the course of next week, if the Government continues to ignore their demands.
However, Rathnapriya and certain other trade unions which are affiliated to the UNP and the ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna declared the said trade union actions to be a failure.
“We have launched strikes in the past and have succeeded in them. We have been able to give the rights of the working people. We launched those strikes at the right time. A strike should be launched when it is possible to win our demands. However, these trade unions' demands have big contradictions. There will be no outcome of this strike and it will fail,” he claimed.