PSM leader meets trade unionists in Melbourne
For the past week the Socialist Party (Australia) has hosted a guest from Malaysia. Comrade V. Selvam is one of the leaders of the Socialist Party of Malaysia and he has spent the week meeting and discussing with a wide range of people from the Victorian labour movement. Below we publish a short article taken from the Electrical Trades Union website about his meeting with the ETU leadership.Comrade V. Selvam - Socialist Party of Malaysia (PSM) - offered some interesting stories and analysis of political developments in Malaysia, when he visited the ETU on Tuesday 7 February.
Having been arrested 18 times for various reasons, including illegal assembly, he knows all about discrimination towards trade unionists. A council member of the Malaysian Trade Union Congress (MTUC), the largest Union in Malaysia, he has vast experience in organising Malaysian workers and campaigning with the urban poor.
ETU members would be interested to know that, just as is the case in Australia, many jobs are being lost to the Chinese economy. So too would they be interested to know that trade unions are under increasing pressure from bosses and government in Malaysia and that individual contracts are the preferred form of employment for bosses.
And the media? Same old story. They never write good things about unionists, he says. All that aside, Selvam lacks nothing when it comes to courage, optimism and a sense of purpose. Workers of the world unite. That’s the message.
