Introduction (excerpt):
The current “Oil and Sugar Crisis” has temporarily subsided. An uneasy calm rests over the sugar-belt while there are vigorous efforts by the sugar-workers and cane farmers to produce as much as possible before the rainy season arrives. After more than six weeks during which the American multinational petroleum (complex) grant was brought to a standstill, the Oilfield Workers Trade Union has agreed to a resumption of work. They accepted a 25% interim wage increase and 6% one-time payment as bonus on basic wages earned in 1974. By forcing the government to make an amendment to section 38 (4) of the Industrial Relations Act, the OWTU also achieved the removal of a legal loophole which prevented their claim to be the bargaining agent for monthly paid workers of Texaco. (…) When 20,000 people, Africans and Indians together as the great majority of oil and sugar workers and peasant farmers assembled a mass rally at Skinner Park on February 18, awareness of the need for racial solidarity and an unified class struggle was quite evident. The initiatives of the ULF (United Labour Front) and the popular response in support of militant action have been met by the force and violence of the established powers. In assessing various aspects of the ensuing “national crisis”, different and divergent points of view on the meaning of the events are presented in the commentaries of this volume…
No comments:
Post a Comment