FUTA trade union action – past and present –IV

FUTA twenty years ago submitted the demands as they came from the sister unions to the authorities but the strike decision was taken by the latter and conveyed to the respective Vice Chancellors. FUTA was in effect representing the teachers’ associations that came under its umbrella and neither FUTA nor the sister unions as they are called did not alter the demands in midstream, and certainly did not introduce new demands nor made the existing demands stronger. If at all it was a compromise that was made in the final stages of the struggle in order to come to a settlement still winning a substantial salary increase and some other demands. FUTA at that time never approached the politicians, political parties, students, student unions nor other trade unions outside the university sector. Neither FUTA allowed the others whether they were political parties or trade unions to approach the Federation. It was a principled struggle that convinced the authorities concerned that there were no political motives behind the struggle.

However, what has happened over the last one and half years is exactly the opposite. The FUTA took the strike decision and then informed the sister unions which is not the method that should have been adopted according to the constitution of the Federation I knew. Last year a token strike was held and then the Heads of Departments resigned as part of the trade union action initiated by FUTA. There had been discussions earlier and the trade union action was taken without waiting for a discussion that the President had offered. The main demand was the increase of salaries of academics and one of the basic assumptions that was made use of to justify the salary increase was that the University Academics were a special category and the underlying impression given to the public was that they were the best qualified in the country if not the cream of the intellectuals. It was said that the university academics should have obtained a very good degree at the time of recruitment and that the promotion criteria were very stringent. The government should have conducted a survey to find out how many academics have a first class degree and a Ph. D. There are many with second class (upper) degrees not to mention those with second class (lower) degrees. Then there are so many without Ph. D’s and one could easily find out people with better qualifications in other professions. How many in the leadership of FUTA can claim that they have a First or a Second (Upper) degree and a Ph. D? I do not attach much value to these paper qualifications but I am mentioning them since FUTA is fond of repeating these arguments on stringent criteria for recruitment and promotion. As I have said already none of the teachers have been trained in teaching, though whatever said and done the Sri Lankan Universities are teaching institutions. Have the university academics in Sri Lanka adopted any new methods in teaching? As far as research is concerned it is better that it is left out of the discussion. Research is not confined to universities and one could find many research officers with Ph. D’s in research institutes carrying out research in their respective fields. Has any academic come out with a new concept or a theory during the last fifty years?

One could say that it is due to the absence of quality people in the Universities that no research of good quality is carried out in the Universities. This is tallied with the argument on recruitment and retention and if the salaries are increased the universities would be able to recruit talented people. However one could again make a survey to find out how many “better” people joined the Universities after the substantial salary increase twenty years ago as senior academics. Matured people join the universities as senior academics for different reasons ranging from a desire to come back to Sri Lanka if they are abroad, and if they are locally employed for the freedom that is enjoyed in the universities and for the fact that the retirement age in the universities is sixty five. The university academics do not have much work, as I know from my experience, and all these talks of the academics working round the clock for twenty four hours are only fairytales. It was wrong to pretend that the university academics are a special category but I am glad that the FUTA under criticism has been compelled to change its stance and say the academics are a special category in the sense that those in various services belong to special categories. There is nothing gained by making university academics belonging to a special service as the other services and I would say that in the final analysis it would be counterproductive.

The 6% of the GDP for education was introduced towards the tail end of the trade union action in the last year and this year since FUTA could not justify its insistence on the increase of basic salaries they demanded the government should give prominence to higher expenditure on education. FUTA this year at first insisted on a basic salary ignoring the increases in allowances that were made during the last few years. With the allowances academics are the better paid category in the public sector of course apart from the income generating institutions such as Central Bank, the Electricity Board. On top of these allowances the University Academics are paid a certain percentage of the fee levying courses subject to a ceiling and very often the maximum is claimed by the teachers. As a result bogus certificate and diploma courses at a level below that of the undergraduate have been introduced and some of these champions of free education could be seen teaching these courses in the universities. Neither FUTA nor the so called Inter University Student Federation has objected has not objected in a meaningful way to these courses, when one could have talked of digging the grave of free education. In any event FUTA insisted on a increase of the basic salary, which had to be decided by the Salaries and Cadre Commission. It is one thing to make demands but another thing to come down during the negotiations as no trade union with reasonable leaders would expect to win all what they want. However, FUTA could not justify their demand for higher basic salaries and it was very clear that insistence on an increase in the basic salary that could not be justified was nothing but an attempt to destabilize the government with demands for salary increases in the other services in the public sector.

When FUTA realized that they could not go forward with their demand for an increase in the basic salary they switched gears and insisted on the spending of 6% of the GDP on education. It was a good tactic by the anti government forces in the FUTA and very soon they were able to obtain the support of the teachers’ union that is mainly responsible for the Z score fiasco asking the UGC to adopt the so called Thatil method of calculating the Z scores separately of the students who sat the GCE (A/L) examination in 2011 for the first time and those who repeated and then prepare lists on the descending order of the scores, which led to the present disaster. This particular trade union attacks the government and the relevant ministers though they themselves are responsible for forcing the UGC to adopt the erroneous Thatil method. In any event FUTA misled the public by claiming that according to a UNESCO report government has to spend 6% of the GDP on education. The relevant section of the UNESCO report is reproduced here. “Education should be given high priority, and not less than 6 percent of a country’s GNP should be devoted to education, as recommended by the International Commission on Education for the Twenty-first Century, chaired by Jacques Delors.” Nowhere is it said that the government should spend 6% of the GDP on education. In Sri Lanka the total government expenditure is about 25% of the GDP, and it is obvious that this particular demand of FUTA cannot be met. The government has to spend on defense of the country which I consider should get the first priority under present circumstances with the TNA, dispersed Tamils, the NGOs and the western counties that are behind the others demanding more and more power to the Northern and Eastern Provinces with their agitation for the removal of the armed forces from those provinces. For the benefit of FUTA leadership I quote from Wikipedia on GNP and GDP. “Gross National Product (GNP) is the market value of all products and services produced in one year by labour and property supplied by the residents of a country. Unlike Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which defines production based on the geographical location of production, GNP allocates production based on ownership.” I know that a pundit would say that Wikipedia is not authoritative but I invite anybody to give a so called authoritative definition of GNP or GDP that contradicts the above.

I would not say that the so called Academic Spring with this 6% issue was introduced by somebody from the NGOs or anti government lobby but it gave an opportunity for the latter to rally all the anti government forces from Ven. Maduluwawe Sobhitha Thero to Anoma Fonseka against the government, except I suppose the TNA tactically. It is not FUTA that organized the gathering of the last week, it has no organizing abilities to do so, and those who are responsible want the Academic Spring converted to another kind of Spring. Probably they wanted to bring the TNA at the “correct” moment. However, the gathering is the end of the spring and autumn has fallen without going through a summer. It is expected that the government will enter into an agreement with FUTA this week, and I understand that the infamous demand of FUTA to give the university teachers an allowance to educate two of their offspring in government or private schools to support free education will not be met.

Copyright Prof. Nalin De Silva

FUTA trade union action – past and present –II

Twenty years ago FUTA did not consider the University academics to belong to a special category, and the demands that were made to the authorities on salaries and other benefits were not based on that assumption. It is true that the University academics perform duties that the others do not but that does not make them a special category. If they belong to a special category then all the others not only ion the Universities but also in other places of work could claim themselves to constitute special categories and when each category consider themselves as a special category then the meaning of the word special category is lost. Except for the demand that a 6% of the GDP should be spent on education in general, all the other demands are based on the special category claim and as a result the demands cannot be justified. The Universities in Sri Lanka are mainly teaching universities and unfortunately no training is given to them in this field. When I joined the then University of Ceylon as an assistant lecturer forty five years ago I had no training in teaching except for the experience I had as a teacher for six months at Wadduwa Central College instructing students preparing for University Admissions in Pure and Applied Mathematics immediately after I sat for my University Preliminary (Entrance) examination n 1962. Some of the students in my classes were older than me but that did not give me any experience in teaching. I do not consider myself to be a good teacher, and many students kept away from my lectures in all the three universities I have taught as most probably they did not have anything to learn from me. One student who was taught by me at Wadduwa was unfortunate enough to find himself in my classes at Peradeniya! I have cited my experience at Wadduwa only to show that there was a dearth of teachers in most of the schools in Sri Lanka fifty years ago even in urban areas and over the years the situation has improved though there is much to be done especially in the rural areas. Just as much teachers in schools should be trained the University Lecturers are in need of training in teaching. It is true that some are born teachers but that is only a very small percentage that is negligible. It has to be mentioned that when this question came up twenty years ago many senior academics in the Faculties other than the Faculty of Education did not like the idea as they thought they had better qualifications than even their colleagues in the Faculty of Education. I do not want to go into details at this juncture as it would be embarrassing to some of them who are still living. If FUTA is interested in the improvement of university education it should take up this matter with the UGC and the ministry of higher education.

There has been an improvement in education in general over the years but parties with vested interests have been trying to show that there is a crisis in education at present. They are politically motivated as seen from the cry over the Z score problem and the mistakes in the G. C. E. (A/L) question papers this year. Some of these politically biased leaders of teacher unions and some journalists try to sling mud at the two ministers concerned as if they are responsible for the errors. The Z score problem is nothing but a creation of some University Academics and Journalists and of course some political parties and their leaders. The UGC had appointed a committee of experts drawn from the Universities to come up with a recommendation on admission of students to the universities as there were two sets of students who sat either for the new syllabus or old syllabus question papers. The Examination Department issued the Z scores of students calculated according to the formula recommended by the UGC, which itself was recommended by the committee of experts. The committee most probably recommended a formula that they had taken from a book, but unfortunately it was wrong conceptually. However the error was marginal in practice and I am told that the application of the formula did not alter the percentages of students admitted to the universities in each stream from students who sat the examination for the first time and those who repeated. The politically biased teacher trade unions, politicians in the opposition and some journalists unfortunately encouraged by Prof. Thatil were able to create a public opinion against the adoption of the formula of the experts drawn from the Universities. It is interesting to note that the committee was not criticized for the method adopted but the two ministers concerned. That was nothing but politicalizing an issue, and it should be realized that it is not only the government that is responsible for politicalization. The student bodies in the universities are politicalized, and unfortunately even FUTA is now engaged in politicalized issues as seen from the current trade union action.

The politically motivated agitations over the Z score was followed by litigation, and the Supreme Court decided that the Z scores should be calculated separately in the case of first times and the repeaters for the purpose of admission of students to the universities. The UGC instructed the Examination Department eventually to calculate the Z scores separately and arrange them in descending order as had been suggested by Prof. Thatil. All hell broke loose and it was found that the repeaters who sat the question papers in the old syllabus had been penalized as a result. For example in the last few years of the students who were admitted to the Faculties of Medicine about 56% had been from the repeaters, but this year with the adoption of the Thatil method it had come down to about 24%. Now the repeaters have gone before the Supreme Court and it appears that Supreme Court had said that the UGC had not carried out the instructions given by them. If that is so it has to be investigated and the UGC should be punished if they had failed to implement an order of the Supreme Court. Already a leader of the UNP has said that the present problem is due to the non implementation of the Supreme Court decision, and the Minister of Higher Education should initiate action to obtain the Supreme Court decision if it is legally possible. Apparently some 8000 students have been affected and it is the duty of the government to obtain the method recommended by the Supreme Court, if there is any recommendation as such and implement it. However, it is unfortunate, to say the least, that FUTA as a body is silent on this problem and has not thought of giving the expert opinion of the academic staff who are members of the unions that are affiliated to FUTA.

It has been found that there have been mistakes in the question papers set for the G. C. E. (A/L) examination this year and the very same teacher trade union that politicalized the Z score issue is up in arms against the government. It could be claimed that the Minister of Education is ultimately responsible for the mistakes but it is only a lame theoretical position that can be adopted by the relevant trade union to criticize the minister. What these critics do not mention is that there have been mistakes in question papers over the years and this year is not an exception. It is certainly not due to a so called crisis in education, and the setters, moderators, controllers in chief of examinations in each question paper are university academics who are adequately remunerated for their efforts. Though it is desirable to have question papers without any errors the work done by the academics have to be appreciated and we have to admit that human errors are always possible. I myself have been involved with this work for a few years, and I know the amount of time and effort that go into setting of question papers and that very often the academic staff available is very minimal. I know of a situation where there were only two academics available for setting, moderating and proof reading of four question papers and though question papers without errors is the most desirable the creep in of human errors have to be treated without political motivations. It is the practice for the board of examiners to get together and device a marking scheme taking into consideration the errors and to see that the students are penalized minimally as a result of the errors. What is bothering me is the silence of FUTA over this problem and the agitation of one of their mates that happens to be a politically motivated teacher union in the “struggle” to improve the education in general. (To be continued)

Copyright Prof. Nalin De Silva

FUTA trade union action – past and present

I have to postpone the discussion on “The existence of objects” in order to write on FUTA trade union action, that has been going on for some time.

FUTA stands for the Federation of University Teachers’ Associations and it was established in the eighties by some of us who were in the Universities at that time. There had been a University Teachers’ Associations Federation prior to that but it had not been functioning due to some reason or other. I was one of the persons associated with drafting the constitution of the FUTA, and the secretary of the Federation from its inception until I became the President in the late eighties following Prof. W. S. Karunaratne, Mr. W. B. Dorakumbura and Prof. O. W. Jayaratne. One of the first tasks we had to face was to convince the authorities that they should have discussions with FUTA. Prof. S. Kalpage who was then the Chairman of the UGC as well as the Secretary to the Ministry of Higher education with the President J R Jayawardane as the minister refused to talk to FUTA claiming that FUTA was not registered as a trade union in the Ministry of Labour. We argued that FUTA was a federation of trade unions and as such it was only necessary that the member unions of FUTA should be registered as trade unions. Finally probably after consulting the Ministry of Labour, Prof. Kalpage sent an officer of the UGC to our home in the night of one day to convey the message that FUTA could meet the UGC during the course of the same week. It was the first “win” of the FUTA and we had better success when FUTA as a result of trade union action in the form of a strike won a substantial salary increase in 1993 under my leadership.

It has to be mentioned that I had been interdicted in November 1992 and dismissed in April 1993 by the University of Colombo and as such I was not a member of any of the trade unions in the University of Colombo, and thus I was not representing any trade union in FUTA after 23rd April 1993. Fortunately the trade union Act and the English Instructors’ Union came to my rescue, and I was elected by the English Instructors not only as one of the two outside members but also as their representative to FUTA, amidst objections from some University Teachers’ Associations. By this time Mr. A.C.S. Hameed whom I loved to negotiate with had become the Minister of Higher Education under President Premadasa, and Prof. Arjuna Aluwihare the affable intellectual was the Chairman of the UGC. We had a very good team of negotiators representing FUTA and we were very logical and consistent in our negotiations, and never wavered as we had thought about our demands in detail. We had no difficulty in justifying our demands and I came to know the minister very well during the years of negotiations. I remember that all the negotiations with the minister and the UGC were cordial except on one occasion when Prof. Aluwihare was abroad. The UGC after years of negotiations, and trade union action by FUTA refused to come to a settlement and we threatened to walk out from negotiations and said that we would only have negotiations with the minster who was much more logical than some academics on the other side of the table. The UGC had to give in and the academics won a very substantial salary increase.

It is to the credit of the minister and the chairman of the UGC that they did not make a fuss of having me as the President of FUTA even after I had been dismissed from the University of Colombo. They understood the trade union act but unfortunately some academics including some Vic Chancellors did not like my face. There were obstacles to have meetings of the executive committee of FUTA as the President of the Federation was debarred from entering the premises of the University of Colombo, which was the official head quarters of FUTA. FUTA was grateful to Prof. Aluwihare who once gave us permission to use the Board Room of the UGC to have our meetings when he came to know that we had to have our meetings under the Mara trees on the sides of the Kumarathunga Munidadsa Mawatha. It has to be acknowledged that the government never had any ad hoc meetings with FUTA, as we negotiated only with the Minster of Higher Education and/or the UGC. No minister other than the minister of higher education was involved in any of the discussions and we would not have allowed any other minister to bypass the minister of higher education. Certainly henchmen of other ministers had no say in the discussions whether they were academics or not. I am sure that President Premadasa was aware of what was going on though he did not have any meetings with FUTA. The only meeting he had with FUTA was in connection with reopening of the universities after the long closure of the Universities due to the JVP activities. He invited me as the Secretary of FUTA at that time to Sucharitha Mandiraya around 10.00 pm, not a very good time to visit Sucharitha Mandiraya then, and wanted to know what my proposals were in regard of opening universities. He agreed to all my proposals and I had to go to Sucharitha Mandiraya again on the following day at the same not so auspices time to vet the cabinet paper that had been prepared along the lines I had suggested. Though I was an opponent of the government the President had no misgivings in consulting the Secretary of FUTA on one of the most acute problems the government had to face at that time. On my part I was representing FUTA, and I never thought of my personal political views in helping the government to find a solution to the problems. It has to be mentioned that among others North Colombo Medical College became the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Kelaniya and the University teachers and the non academics were given a back log clearance allowance as a result of those mid night discussions at Sucharitha. The FUTA at that time did not consider the University Academics to be a special category and even during the 1992/93 trade union struggle cooperated with the non academic trade unions to win a salary increase. The officials of FUTA had discussions with the trade unions of the non academics and there was a good understanding between the two parties. It has to be emphasized that my dismissal from the University of Colombo had nothing to do with my opposition to the government personally, and I am aware that the minster did not like the decision of the council of the University of Colombo to sack me, though he did not intervene to reverse it.

FUTA which is the umbrella organization of the University Teachers’ Associations in the country is not merely a trade union. It has to play an advisory role and I blame the government as well as the FUTA for not having discussions on the Z score problem. Even though FUTA is involved with a trade union struggle the government and FUTA should have discussed this problem as it affects the lives of innocent students whose parents have sleepless nights over the future of the children. Unlike the political parties the FUTA should have thought of the problem from a national point of view, in the spirit of its constitution. The GCE (A/L) examination 2012 has already begun without many students who sat the examination in 2011 having an idea as to whether they could enter the Universities or not.

Now let us discuss the present trade union struggle of the FUTA. It is unfortunate that FUTA is not consistent with its demands, and have not thought about them in detail. Even schoolboy debaters argue better and I do not find them to be well prepared. It appears that the FUTA changes its emphasis on the demands from time to time shifting their priorities. As an individual I like Dr. Nirmal Ranjith Devasiri, the present President of FUTA whom I know from his student days at the University of Colombo. However, there appear to be many spokespersons for FUTA who do not speak in unison. In a sense it is not much different from the government but the latter in the final analysis is controlled by President Mahinda Rajapakse. Recently the Chinthana Parshadaya of which I am the secretary organized a conference (sammanthranaya) on the Z score and University teachers’ trade union struggle. We invited several stalwarts of FUTA but they did not accept our invitation claiming that the invitation should go to FUTA and not to individuals. We acceded and FUTA nominated its President Dr. Nirmal Devasiri. However, at the conference he spoke as Dr. Devasiri the individual and not as the President of FUTA. He went on to speak on the crisis of education in a very general way without much reference to the demands of FUTA, claiming that they were only details. However, the same day at the same place in the morning FUTA had had a press conference together with some other trade unions including the Guru Sangamaya that was instrumental in politicizing the Z score issue, and trying to use it against the relevant ministers and the government in general mainly over the 6% issue. In spite of that at our meeting Dr. Nirmal Devasiri did not emphasize the 6% as they seem to have lost the thrust of the argument. The FUTA has a confused idea on the calculation of the 6% of the GDP, and FUTA is now on a sticky wicket as a result. (To be continued)

Copyright Prof. Nalin De Silva