Massive Workers’ Day rally reveals undercurrents of discontent

May 07, 2014

By Anil Netto
Tens of thousands of Malaysians gathered at Dataran Merdeka on May 1 in the largest Workers' Day rally the nation has seen. They did not come to have fun, but to register their concern about the impending Goods and Services Tax and a host of other issues affecting the workers. People might smirk cynically about trade unions and workers protesting on the streets. But as one placard at the rally bearing a labour slogan reminded us: “Unions – the people who brought you weekends.”

Deep down many can sense that the long-term direction of the economy does not serve the interests of the 99 per cent. And that explains the large turnout on Workers’ Day. The GST is the latest burden to be loaded onto the shoulders of ordinary Malaysians. (A survey shows that 62 per cent of Malaysians disagree with the new tax.)

But it is not just the GST, which would not have been necessary if the country's financial resources had been prudently managed and corruption minimised. A host of neoliberal measures including privatisation is adding to the pressure exerted on workers.

The hard-fought victory by the workers' movement to secure an eight-hour work day is becoming a distant memory as more and more Malaysians are forced to work 10, 12 or even 14 hours a day just to secure a comfortable life-style.

Now they have to contend with wider income inequality – which is also a serious problem in many other countries around the world.

The usual solution, even among grassroots groups working among the poor and the marginalised, is to work to try and empower the poor. More mainstream politicians and economists may talk about trying to improve opportunities for the poor through training and upgrading their skills.

This approach, while having its merits, pays scant attention to the rich, especially the top 1 per cent.

But what if the problem lies here: Many among the top 1 one per cent may have grown rich at the expense of the workers and other ordinary people. What if the profits that accrued to the wealthy have come off the workers’ backs?

There are several ways this may have come about, as Peter Marcuse, a professor emeritus of urban planning, outlines. (My comments in brackets):

Exploitation of the workers (The less you pay your workers, the more hours they are forced to work, the higher the profits for the company and the higher the dividends for the firm’s shareholders).

Exploitation of the consumers (Firms can increase their sales by persuading the ordinary people to buy more or to upgrade their gadgets and cars to the latest models. This is done through slick advertising campaigns that play on the psychology of not wanting to be left out of the crowd.)

Exploitation by financial institutions: (By providing loans and credit to consumers to buy the stuff — consumers’ items, cars, houses — they normally wouldn’t be able to afford. The bank interest and charges result in enormous profits for the banks, which in turn provides fabulous dividends to the elite shareholders.)

Exploitation of land ownership (Property speculation, land grabs and the snapping up of scarce property by those with Big Capital results in higher rentals and housing prices that translate into larger returns for the propertied class and developers. The situation is aggravated when entire communities are evicted from their land for property development or so that large mining corporations may extract the minerals from under the land (as in the case of India).

Marcuse says these forms of exploitation are the direct cause of poverty and inequality, and adds that if we really want to reduce poverty, we have to look at not only how to directly help the poor but also how to “constrain” the rich from further exploiting the poor.

Perhaps this is why in the Gospels, Jesus contrasts the rich man against the poor man, Lazarus.

During the time of Jesus, many of the rich had often grown wealthier as a result of the consolidation of land ownership into larger and larger estates. This came about as an increasing number of the peasants and farmers were being forced into debt (perhaps due to poor harvests, drought, crop failure), some of them falling off the cliff into destitution.

When they were unable to repay their debt, they lost their lands to the propertied class. Instead of being independent farmers with their own land, they were forced to become daily wage casual labourers hired by estate owners and landlords.

And we know what happened in the Gospel story to both the rich man and Lazarus in the afterlife.

So it is not enough just to look at poverty alone without considering how systemic pressures are contributing to this problem. The GST is just one manifestation of how ordinary people are being squeezed (this time by a new tax) while income taxes on the rich and the large corporations are progressively reduced.

It is time we look at both sides of the phenomenon of income inequality to find out to what extent inequality is caused through the exploitation of ordinary people, including workers.