Remembering PP Narayanan, the first MTUC president

 

PP Narayanan was honoured by MTUC as the ‘Father of Malaysian Workers’ in 1986. (Wikipedia pic)

PETALING JAYA: The lively debates during general council meetings when PP Narayanan was the Malaysian Trade Union Congress (MTUC) president will forever be embedded in A Sivananthan’s memory.

“We had enlightening discussions on the labour issues with him because he was a broad-minded person,” said Sivananthan, who is still part of the MTUC general council today.

Narayanan was elected as the first MTUC president in 1950, when the country was in the early stages of developing its labour laws.

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Sivananthan said being the MTUC president at that time was no easy feat, but Narayanan handled himself well.

“He chaired with patience, allowing everyone (from different trade unions and the government) a chance to speak, and his arguments were intelligent and sound,” he said.

Narayanan became involved in trade unionism after being forced to work when the Japanese invasion disrupted his studies at the Technical College in Kuala Lumpur.

In 1942, he took a job as an apprentice winchman at a tin mine in Rawang, Selangor, where he earned one Straits dollar a day. This first experience with manual labourers inspired him to pursue a career in labour relations.

In 1946, after World War II, he mobilised workers to form trade unions in the country by establishing the National Union of Plantation Workers (NUPW) where he served as secretary-general for 38 years.

Sivananthan, a former MTUC financial secretary, said the congress has lost its way and pales in comparison to Narayanan’s time. He said the current leadership has much to learn from Narayanan.

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“The present leadership needs to learn that we must argue things out, that we must listen to the views of others, including MTUC members, and take them into account,” he said.

Lawyer B Lobo, who was Narayanan’s deputy chief industrial relations officer at NUPW in the 1970s, described his former employer as a charitable man who also helped him complete his studies.

“He told me that I should go and study law. I told him I didn’t have money but he said not to worry because he had sent a number of his workers’ children for law studies and they all became lawyers.”

Although Lobo was not a child of an employee, Narayanan managed to secure a loan for his university fees.

After graduating, Narayanan told him to “act only for employees, not for employers”, a promise he kept in his 45 years of practising law.

Narayanan was honoured by MTUC as the “Father of Malaysian Workers” in 1986. He died in 1996 at the age of 73 from septicaemia, four years after retiring. - FMT