Parmeshwar Devkota

As usual, the 132nd International Labour Day, also known as May Day, was observed with much fanfare across the world on Saturday.
Before the Industrial Revolution, the pace of human civilisation was smooth, steady and friendly in the Western as well as the Eastern parts of this planet. Earlier skilled craftsmen did their manual works while the workers would perform their duties based on their physical strength to the level of satisfying their masters.
It was because there was no rush for producing goods in large amount for money and pecuniary greed among masters. But, the Industrial Revolution that was led by the then super power Great Britain followed by the United States of America, Italy and France since 1760 affected the human civilisations on various fronts. It impacted labourers in two ways - it expedited purchase and sales of labour force and forceful exploitation of their work, which helped increase production.
It changed working styles and methods. The manual way of production was replaced by huge machines and processing at various levels. And it demanded continuous attention of more than one person at a time creating excessive exertions for the workers in textile factories, collieries and iron mines. In the West, the factory owners used to keep their labourers in confinements and operate the firms for an unlimited time through coercion. The senseless industrialisation had adverse impact on the health of workers. The poor living environment, diet and overwork induced fatigue while the diseases caused untimely death of millions of workers, especially in factories in Britain and the USA.
The Boston Tea Party was an event of throwing out 342 tea packets belonging to the East India Company carried out by a group of 60 people at night of December 16, 1773. It caused a total loss of Sterling Pound 18,000 due to all the tortures meted out to workers and working class people by the British rule.
Robert Owen, under his ‘socialist’ enterprise at New Lanark, set the routine of an eight-hour a day work. He also came up with the slogan: Eight hours’ labour, eight hours’ recreation, eight hours’ rest’ in 1817. Since then, the model has been adopted by various nations.
This write-up does not seek to detail the atrocities on labourers in the West but to extend congratulations to workers, and make a special appeal to Nepali workers, who did not suffer as much as their counterpart in aforementioned nations, barring some exceptions. Nepali labourers, from the very beginning, remained organised under the umbrella of the left leaning political parties. They became the sister organisations of those parties which were either in power or opposition.
Therefore, they used to have upper hand in the bargaining with the industrialists. So, sometime their bargain appears to be impracticable, forcing some industrialists to close their firms. Some local and foreign firms relocated their plants to India and Bangladesh, and some other investors selected other areas for investment.
Therefore, it is imperative for labourers and trade unions to start a retrospect of their rigid position and industrial agitations they held in the past, and take a rational stand to ensure that there is win-win situation for the both sides.