ON LABOR DAY workers must question if they are better off than before and WHY?

This year’s Workers’ Day celebration is even more significant because Malaysians will also be going to the polls four days later with a chance If the workers’to decide how they want their future to be.

As such it is timely for all those who are working for wages or a livelihood to pause and reflect, reflect and pray for greater justice to that God-ordained gift called ‘work’. 2013 Workers’ Day is of extra significance to all Malaysians because the very core of GE-13 is about economic management, wealth creation, quality of life, justice, fairness and clean governance that ensure the worker’s future.

If the workers’ life and times is protected and nurtured, the nation’s future is a sunrise. If the workers are short-changed, the nation’s elite will be the sole beneficiaries. Hence we have to ask ourselves two questions.

One, we have to ask ourselves how much better off are we then our forefathers? Is all the wealth and splendor around us – which the BN led government claims are because of them, making our working, recreating and sleeping lives any better?

Two, we have to examine how have we been treating all the imported foreign labour in this country? Have we been fair and just and honorable or are we – in plain language, exploiting these poverty-plagued citizens for our own well being?

Therein lays the answer to the outcome of GE-13.

No better off than before

If the workers honestly feel that they are not any better off than their forefathers – commensurate with all the mega trappings and skyscrapers, progress and development BN style, what then are we celebrating on Workers’ Day?

If we feel that we have been exploiting the foreign workers – be it in wage rates, work hours, physical abuse, living conditions, or whatever, then what are we celebrating in memory of Workers’ Day?

If the powers that be are delivering speeches as they showcase snapshots of state-or-art factories, row after rows of smart uniforms, and proclaiming that Malaysian workers are far better off than their neighbours, we need to ask why then is the BN-led government giving its citizens free meals, free rations and RM1.36 allowance in the run-up to GE-13?

Yes. Workers need to ask what ever happened to all their unions these past thirty years? They need to ask where have the voices of their leaders gone? Till this date, the bank employees for example, are still crying out for the gross injustices against workers. True?

Yes. How many times have foreign governments expressed concern for their citizens who came here to earn a living, over reported incidents of ill treatment, gross injustices and taking advantage of their situations?

How many foreign laborers would have told you that they had to pay the lone cops on the beat for fear of being detained? Likewise how many employers would have told you that they had to bail out their detained workers even though they had valid papers?

Or how about the many maids who kept paying thousands of ringgit to seeming agents who kept disappearing after making do with the installment payments from these helpless maids? Go ask Tenaganita if you will. But let us not forget, even Irene Fernandez was arrested and detained for speaking out.

Never enough to catch up with rising costs

Malaysian workers need to do a lot of soul searching this May Day. As one office boy said, “In other countries people wait for their pay to spend happily; we here wait for our pay day to pay our previous 30 days debt” perhaps best summarizes the plight of the working population in Malaysia.

Despite all the petro dollars; despite all the favorable palm oil trading; despite all the mega trappings of physical development, Malaysian workers today need to be reminded that they ought to be grateful for the RM1.36 handout.

As we mark Workers’ Day, we need to ask ourselves why is it many people we know have to take on two jobs; or why many more have to ask their spouses too to go get a job.

Remember too the times when even asking all these questions was deemed as seditious and treason.

Will the answers to these questions translate to an effective outcome in GE-13? Yes? No?

MAILBAG