Transcript
FELIX ANTHONY: We also understand that many of the civil servants, teachers, nurses have been intimidated, are a bit scared to be seen in the march as well and this is because they all feel insecure in their workplace at the moment with all these individual contracts being signed by workers. We also appreciate that there is some difficulty with people coming out.
SALLY ROUND: I see comments by the Attorney-General saying that 500 workers turned up. What's your reaction to that?
FA: Well, I expect that from government, I expect that from some of the media that we have in Fiji. You know they always bend backwards to keep government happy but that's something that we dispute and I think many who saw the march actually recognised that that's not true.
SR: And the Attorney-General saying that if people were so concerned many more would have turned out, there are 28-thousand civil servants, but you're saying ...
FA: I really think there'd be more than 30-thousand who would have turned out if the Attorney-General and his government did not intimidate workers at the workplace and instill fear in them. Not only that but forget about the march, I mean more lately the public sector unions were going to have a secret ballot for industrial action and we had this government threaten the workers, the civil servants that if they were to vote they would be disciplined, so that's the kind of environment that the workers live in here in Fiji and we are slowly trying to get out of that. As I've said, I understand why people are scared to come out. It's all about their job security at the moment.
SR: What were you actually calling for in the march?
FA: Well, there are five issues that we had, of course the first was the government's imposition of the fixed term contracts and of course these contracts are imposed without any discussions with the unions and it's contrary to its obligation to ensure collective bargaining for those workers who wish to collectively bargain and let the union negotiate on their behalf. That's the first issue. Of course the second was that of the minimum wage. We advocated for a four dollar minimum wage and you can imagine that compared to New Zealand. and the government here unilaterally set FJ$2.68 as a minimum wage and we believe that that is grossly inadequate. While we also recognise that 4 dollars is still below the poverty line, what we advocate is that there ought to be an annual review of this until we have the minimum wage as a living wage. The third issue is the government's reneging on the agreement it signed with the Fiji Trades Union Congress, the Employers Federation here and the ILO where it undertook to review all labour legislation to ensure full compliance with ILO core conventions and that has still not happened. And of course quite apart from that was the review of essential industries. The fourth issue is that of the right to strike and to conduct secret ballots in this country. What we have had is where unions have attempted to conduct secret ballots for industrial action, this is being stopped by the Ministry of Labour so we're not even allowed to have secret ballots conducted for industrial action, let alone having the right to strike in this country while our labour laws actually allow us to do that but the government has not allowed unions to exercise those laws and not only that, the irony is they then turn around and tell unions that we ought to follow the law. Now we followed the laws to the letter and we still have obstacles placed before us before we can do that. It's all about us regaining our rights back and we've had government which is actually saying the right thing in the international forum but doing quite the opposite back home.
SR: Now what do you say to further comments by Mr Sayed-Khaiyum that this march was just a way of reviving the political careers of the likes of yourself and Mahendra Chaudhry.
FA: Well this march was organised by the Fiji Trades Union Congress . It had nothing to do with Mahendra Chaudhry. Mahendra Chaudhry simply supported the march and we've welcomed anyone who supports our cause to join us in the march and number two is about reviving political careers. I'm not in any politics at the moment and I don't intend to contest any elections at all. This is just the usual way of this government brushing aside issues and side-tracking issues. I really believe Khaiyum should actually respond to the issues that we have raised and address them rather than making stupid allegations and trying to distract people from the real issues.
