Trade Union Meeting addressed by Ram Seegobin
05.09.2008
Ram Seegobin, LALIT leading member, addressed the trade union delegates of the Federation of Para-Statal Bodies and Other Unions, the State Employees Federaton and the Local Government Unions at a joint Seminar on Wednesday, 3 September. Ram Seegobin's session was three-hours' long. Well over half the delegates present and representing these public sector unions were women, and in the chair was Ms. Nunkoo. Ram Seegobin spoke to the theme: "Trade Unions faced with a Systemic Crisis in the Country".
In the first half of the session Ram Seegobin outlined exactly what the systemic crisis means, and why LALIT calls the crisis "systemic". (See our documents section for background on this.) He showed how Government's and the bosses' attempts to respond to the crisis have often either made it worse (sacking more workers, in order to maintain profits for owners), or merely masked the problem by actions like one-off sales of Mauritius' very scarce land-resources to foreign millionaires.
The second half was on what the working class, and in particular, the trade union movement can and should do, faced with this type of crisis. The session over-shot by half-an hour, because the 45 minutes for questions and debate became too interesting for anyone to want to end the session.
