The 1962 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership

BIOGRAPHY of Palayil Pathazapurayil Narayanan

Citizen and labor leader of the Federation of Malaya, PALAYIL PATHAZAPURAYIL NARAYANAN was born in South India at Tolanur, Kerala on February 15, 1923 to Chettur Narayanan Nair and Palayil Janaki Amma. His early education was acquired at Board High School, Cherokunnu, India, and, after his family moved to Malaya in 1937, he attended the K.K.M., School of Commerce run by his uncle in Kuala Lumpur. He intended to become an electrical engineer, but his later studies at the Technical College in Kuala Lumpur were interrupted by the arrival of Japanese invading forces.

Moving to Rawang, Selangor in 1942, he worked as apprentice winchman in a tin mine at a daily wage of one Straits dollar. This first direct contact with manual laborers of different nationalities was eventually to lead the young NARAYANAN to his career in labor relations. As an immigrant boy of 14, seeing the multiracial population and higher standard of living in Kuala Lumpur, Malaya had seemed to him a land of opportunity. Now he found workers living mean existences in a state of ignorance with little chance to improve their lot. Gaining insight into their problems he determined to dedicate his life to their emancipation. To insure that he does not forget the lessons of the tin mine, he has kept the small pay slip and a photostat copy is carried with him everywhere.

Liberation brought many new labor problems, arising from wartime dislocations and lack of maintenance, disruption of the established order, and a Communist design to take over the country. Most of the estate laborers, many of whom were coerced by the Japanese into working on such projects as the Siam railway, were undernourished and unused to fixed hours of work. Abuses of their authority during the occupation had widened the cleavage between estate Asian staff and the laborers. Low wages and discrimination in payment between Indian and Chinese tappers contributed to the general unrest. No labor organizations existed to redress grievances; the only prewar groups were Chinese mutual aid societies and the Japanese had suppressed all labor activity during their occupation.

The first effort to organize plantation workers on a non-Communist basis in Malaya was a general union formed by P. P. NARAYANAN and 10 others at Seremban, Negri Sembilan, on January 27, 1946. Called the Negri Sembilan Indian Labor Union, it was by present standards poorly organized and regulated and the early membership was a hodgepodge of rubber workers, railwaymen, public works laborers, postmen, cigar makers, goldsmith assistants and a few others. This mixed membership continued until a law in 1947 required workers to move into unions by trade. Initially composed only of Indians and preponderantly rubber workers, the general union later became the Negri Sembilan Plantation Workers' Union (NSPWU) and membership was opened to estate workers of all nationalities. It remained independent of the Communist-supported General Labor Union (GLIT) and P. P. NARAYANAN became organizing secretary.

Upon consolidation of its position in Negri Sembilan, the NSPWU, in 1952, took the name Plantation Workers' Union, Malaya, reflecting an expansion to other States. With P. P. NARAYANAN serving as Secretary General, it became the strongest of the plantation workers organizations in Malaya with a membership of 45,000. In 1954, this group joined with four others in a National Union of Plantation Workers (NUPW). NARAYANAN, to whose hard work the successful merger was largely due, has been elected continuously Secretary General of the national organization since its inception. Incomparably the largest trade union in Malaya and with few peers in Asia, the Union's progress has been significant in the development of the Malayan labor movement.

Many other unions had been formed in 1946, and organized labor's first activities were symptomatic of the restlessness and change in attitudes brought by the war. Declining to accept the prewar standard of the Labor Department prescribing wages and conditions of employment, there were many strikes, with demands for increased wages, overtime raises, workmen's compensation, sick pay, dismissal of unpopular staff, amendment of work hours and improvement of living conditions. Dominating labor from 1945 to 1949 was the Malayan Communist Party, enjoying wide support due to its important role in the underground against the Japanese and embarked upon an attempt to gain power through political strikes, economic sabotage and finally armed insurrection.

Due to the Emergency declared on June 19, 1948, building a bona fide national union of plantation workers such as P. P. NARAYANAN envisaged was fraught with difficulties. After June 16, 1948, when the Pan-Malayan Federation of Trade Unions, successor to GLU, failed to qualify for registration, Communist activities were underground and difficult to recognize. While insurgents, operating from the jungle, used first persuasion and then terrorism to enlist support on estates and in towns, their confederates sought to infiltrate union ranks. At least 20 Malayan trade union leaders were killed and plantation workers, because of their exposed and often isolated work sites, were especially vulnerable to intimidation. Infiltration was particularly successful in Chinese unions, which were largest in the early postwar labor movement.

With arrests of leftist trade unionists who openly defied the authorities and supported the terrorists, the belief spread among estate workers that membership in unions meant sympathizing with the insurgents or in any case inviting trouble either from police or employers. Management, unable to proceed with reconstruction and paying heavily in physical damage to plantations and for security measures, was disposed to regard all labor organizers as professional troublemakers. Men like NARAYANAN, who were sincere in wanting to raise working standards and increase production, had to win acceptance from both employers and workers. Through this period welcome assistance came from the official Trade Union Adviser, a veteran of the British Railwaymen's Union.

P. P. NARAYANAN was an energetic but careful organizer. To counter infiltration of NUPW ranks, membership of estate committees was restricted to men who had worked on the estate for two years—"During that period, we can spot political leanings," Mr. NARAYANAN explained. To remove doubts from workers' minds and explain to them what trade unionism meant, he traveled to every plantation area of Malaya, enduring many privations and the constant threat of death by the terrorists. Curfews at dusk and other Emergency restrictions on travel hampered organizing activities, particularly in remote areas. Holding back association was a regulation recognizing all estates as private property and requiring organizers to obtain written or verbal consent from management before entering. After 1954, because the NUPW was well established, its organizers were generally not refused entry to estates where the union had members, but a large number of estates today remain to be organized.

Another obstacle was the communal life on estates. With Malay, Indian and Chinese workers living in separate subcommunities, speaking different languages and educated in separate schools, the tendency was for each ethnic group to organize separate unions, rendering concerted action difficult. After the Communist betrayal, many Chinese withdrew from unions and both they and Malay workers are still often reluctant to join any union. Hence the labor organizations that came to prominence after 1948 assumed a racial character, though the Indians had no desire to organize on this basis. Having become leaders of unions they had taken the initiative to organize, Indians then found in seeking members that Chinese and Malays were additionally reluctant to accept Indian domination. Compared to 1946 when 54 per cent of Malaya's trade unionists were Chinese, 25 per cent Indians and one per cent Malays, in 1952 only 15 per cent were Chinese, 70 per cent were Indians and 13 per cent Malays, yet Chinese workers outnumber Indians three to one in Malaya's total labor force.

In early acknowledgement of labor's and P. P. NARAYANAN’s roles on the national scene, he was appointed, in 1947, to the Malayan Labor Advisory Board and, from 1948 to 1959 served as one of six labor members on the Federal Legislative Council, chairing the Labor Group during that period. In the highest councils of State his representations and those of his colleagues on labor's behalf resulted in many improvements in legislation and provisions for workers. In 1949, P. P. NARAYANAN and his colleagues conceived and pressed through with the help of Government a social security scheme culminating in the establishment of an Employee Provident Fund which set a precedent in Asia.

When the Communist-controlled Pan-Malayan Federation of Trade Unions was broken up in 1948, some representative organization was required to take its place. The six Councilors representing labor in the Federal Legislative Council took the initiative, and, spending their own money, convened a delegates conference of all registered unions. A working committee was set up to devise a Council, not permitting racial, occupational or industrial domination, where problems affecting labor generally could be discussed and policies mutually agreed upon. It was not to be a super-union, or federation or an organization with power to participate in individual trade union disputes, but to exercise moral authority and leadership. One of the founding members of the Malayan Trade Union Congress (MTUC), P. P. NARAYANAN, at the age of 27, became the first President in 1950, and was reelected for two succeeding years and again in 1955.

When NARAYANAN and his colleagues first organized the union in Negri Sembilan, rubber workers were getting between 60 and 70 Straits cents per day (with independence, Straits dollars became Malayan dollars: M$3:US$1). A weeder, the lowest paid worker on any estate, now gets M$3.25 a day and a tapper who treats 450 trees receives M$3.65 or more according to production, or some 450 per cent higher wages than before they were organized. Today's improved pay and working conditions are in large part the result of responsible trade unionism. A second, fortuitous factor has been the boom in rubber price and the prosperity it has brought to Malaya and those connected with the industry.

In the struggle to raise wages and improve conditions of plantation workers, the first decisive phase began when the rubber selling price went down in 1949 to 36 Straits cents per pound. It was only then, when employers threatened to reduce wages, that the 27 unions of rubber workers not previously affiliated to the GLU came together, and a loosely federated Pan-Malayan Rubber Workers' Union (P-M RWU) was formed to fight wage reduction with P. P. NARAYANAN as Chairman and spokesman of an ad hoc Negotiation Committee. The Committee's efforts resulted in the appointment of the first Rubber Arbitration Board whose report accepted the principle of tying wages of workers to the price of rubber and agreed to recommendations of the Negotiation Committee that discussions would be reopened when the price went above 46 Straits cents per pound. At this stage the Malayan Planting Industries Employers' Association (MPIEA), in which nearly all large estate owners had organized in 1947, signed an agreement granting an overall wage increase of 12 per cent for tappers and weeders and other categories of estate workers.

In the second phase, when the agreement expired six months later, the Negotiation Committee demanded more pay for both weeders and tappers. After protracted negotiations, the MPIEA granted another 12 per cent increase which came into effect on October 1, 1950. The P-M RWU accepted this increase but pressed for still higher wages as rubber prices continued to soar.

Negotiations ultimately broke down, and a second Arbitration Board was set up early in 1951. The Board Chairman, Mr. Justice Taylor, introduced the revolutionary scheme of a regular profit sharing system whereby the wage packets of workers would reflect the world market price of rubber with wages to be fixed quarterly on the combined effect of sliding scales which varied with the cost of living and price of rubber. The Board's award, effective in July 1951, by agreement between the MPIEA and the Negotiation Committee of the P-M RWU, gave over S$14 million in back pay to 300,000 rubber estate workers. For P. P. NARAYANAN, this award was a personal reward for five years of untiring efforts. He credited the success of the negotiations to the teamwork of the Committee and acknowledged "a very great debt" for the friendly advice given by trade unionists and others in public life whose names he could not disclose.

Always eager for advice but never ready to surrender his right to accept or reject it, P. P. NARAYANAN had early in his career sought the counsel of seasoned labor leaders. In addition to the Trade Union Adviser, a number of experienced men from the British Trade Union Congress and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) came to help Malaya's trade union movement because of its key position in the national struggle between Communists and democratic elements.

NARAYANAN also had gained useful experience representing Malaya at the Asian Relations Conference called by Prime Minister Nehru and later the Asian Regional Conference of the International Labor Organization (ILO) in New Delhi in 1947. Attending the ICFTU Inaugural Conference in London as one of three Malayan observers in 1949, he took advantage of the opportunity to study British unions. Subsequently, he and two other colleagues were instrumental in bringing the MTUC into affiliation with the ICFTU. In 1950, he was MTUC nominee in the British TUC delegation to the ILO Plantation Committee at Bandung.

The birth of a national union of Malayan plantation workers was hastened by the criticism of Mr. Justice Taylor in 1953 when the ad hoc and self-appointed P-M RWU Negotiation Committee, pursuing its own terms of reference, became involved in arbitration a second time with the well-organized MPIEA over wages for rubber workers. The industry was then at a low point, and the companies had decided it was necessary to reduce wages below the minimum previously agreed upon because estates were working at an actual loss. The workers contended these reductions were unjustified. Censuring the union leaders for lack of a genuine central organization, the Chairman rejected the workers' submission and his award reduced the pay packet of rubber workers.

To P. P. NARAYANAN, Taylor’s decision and comments were "a challenge not only to rubber workers but to the whole trade union movement in Malaya." His eyes opened to the need for a unified group, he moved quickly. On November 2, 1954, the High Commissioner, Sir Donald MacGillivray opened the inaugural meeting of the National Union of Plantation Workers (NUPW), an amalgamation of the five estate workers unions then existing.

Whereas determination of wages and working conditions and putting up demands was a crude process in the early days and negotiations often were followed by strikes, the only serious labor dispute in the NUPW's brief history occurred in May and June 1956, after a stalemate had been reached in negotiations for higher wages and better working conditions for rubber workers. Personally opposed to strike action, especially during the Emergency, and also hesitant to risk the Union's structure and finances, NARAYANAN carried the Executive Committee in calling a countrywide "go slow" action that lasted 22 days. Members took a voluntary day of rest on Fridays, refused to work overtime or after rain, and practiced "shallow tapping" of rubber trees. Except for a few estates, the campaign was a complete success; never before had so many thousands of Malayan workers given such an exhibition of solidarity.

This action won for workers a 30 per cent increase in wages, overtime rates at time and a half and double time on holidays or paid leave days, a day of rest after six days' continuous work, an increase in paid holidays from three to no less than 10—including four special and religious holidays and six days' annual leave with pay, and withdrawal of employers' demand that the day following rain must be considered a rest day. It also greatly increased the Union's strength and popularity; breaking down the hard core of antiunion employers and antiunion workers, relations between managers and workers improved, and Chinese and Malay workers joined in large numbers.

Since then, employers have elected to negotiate with the union rather than driving it to the wall. P. P. NARAYANAN and his colleagues continue forcefully to maintain that workers must be given a decent living wage but also constantly warn workers not to "go astray" and resort to unnecessary strikes to achieve their objectives. Good unions, he has preached, do not put up pickets immediately after demands are stated. The hard bargaining NUPW has proved its belief in conciliation.

In November 1957, the NUPW gave 18 months notice of cancellation of the 1956 agreement due to anomalies in calculation of tappers' wages. The Union's position was clarified by Mr. NARAYANAN in a letter to the Association on January 31, 1958 stating that the existing formula provided neither a proper basic wage nor any proper incentive factor. Further, the present task assessment of the number of trees tapped, combined with assessment by weight of latex collected, meant the tapper often did not receive the agreed wage.

Some 20 meetings with the MPIEA ensued without agreement. A provocative speech by an MPIEA branch president and an arbitrary cut in wages by the Association resulted in sporadic work stoppages, but negotiations were resumed through the intervention of the Ministry of Labor. The settlement finally reached provided basic and price factors payable as guaranteed wages for tappers. As incentive, an output factor was also introduced, with fields categorized according to type and year of planting and yield per acre—i.e., a tapper's wage packet would not depend only on his own efforts or the price of rubber but also on the productivity of the tree he tapped. Both tappers' and field workers' wages would be calculated on a monthly instead of quarterly average, a half hour break for lunch in eight hours of daily work was allowed for field workers who previously had no break. The decision as to whether a worker was ablebodied was to be decided at the estate level instead of arbitrarily by managers, and a Board system was introduced to record latex brought in by tappers. The NUPW, in April 1959, held group meetings on all estates to explain to workers the new wage agreement to be implemented the following month.

Only one official strike was called and supported by the Union between 1956 and 1959. Involving one estate, it resulted from a miscalculation of workers' wages. Started in February 1959, the strike lasted 77 days, and was broken by employers due to disunity among the 219 Chinese and Indian workers. The NUPW spent M$6,972.50 on rations for the strikers.

The most recent agreement between estate owners and the NUPW formalized on March 1, 1962, gave rubber estate workers M$35 million more per year. The Secretary of the MPIEA signed for the Association and P. P. NARAYANAN for the workers. Under the agreement tappers will receive 21 Malayan cents a day more and all field workers 30 Malayan cents more when the average rubber price is between 70-80 Malayan cents per pound as presently, and additional increases as the price of rubber rises. Workers were also given an extra six days' annual leave, bringing their paid leave to 16 days a year. Medical leave was increased from 14 days to 60 days, and payment during that period was extended from seven days to 30 days.

In 16 years, both the positions of the rubber plantation workers and employee-employer relations have been stabilized. The former refusal of employers to sit with employees for discussions on estate matters is seldom encountered. Joint Consultative Councils of labor and management now confer regularly at the national and state levels, and on 428 estates Councils have been formed which meet every two or three months. On many estates, managers meet the union committees oftener. Suspicion against Asian estate staff is gradually dissipating due to close collaboration between the Asian staff union and the NUPW. Some 90 per cent of disputes are settled at the estate level, and on larger issues compromise usually is reached at the state or national levels without stoppage of work. Much of the credit for this achievement if given to P. P. NARAYANAN and S. P. S. Nathan, the President of the NUPW, described by the retiring President of the MPIEA in 1960 as "certainly not lacking in fighting qualities," but "capable of advancing the cause of better terms and conditions of employment for their members with reason, dignity and humor."

Employers who in 1946 were in no mood for trade unionism, believing it would wreck the country, today admit the NUPW is one of the most progressive trade unions in Southeast Asia. Starting with a membership of 50,000 in 1954, the Union has today over 180,000 members, comprising nearly two-thirds of all plantation workers and half of the total number of organized workers of all occupations in the Federation. Well-organized, it has an annual income of over M$1 million from subscriptions and a centrally controlled financial system; the monthly dues of M$1 per member, less 10 per cent commission paid to collectors, must be deposited weekly in a bank in each area and transferred monthly to the account of the Union's bankers in Kuala Lumpur. Broadly, the pattern of administration has been borrowed from unions in Great Britain and Sweden and adapted to local conditions. Supreme authority is vested in the Triennial Delegates Conference comprised of delegates elected by Branches. On the national level is a 33-member Executive Council, elected by secret ballot by all members, and a working committee of nine attends to union affairs between Council meetings.

The NUPW has eight full-time branch offices in various parts of the country and 120 full-time paid officials. Because of the language differences between employers and employees, this staff is conversant in English and one or more of the three vernaculars, enabling workers to speak to the managers through a Union man rather than only estate staff to insure that the full facts of any problem are disclosed.

To promote a Malayan outlook, for the last eight years Executive Council meetings and various other conferences have been held in Malay, with interpreters standing by to translate into Tamil, Chinese and English as the situation requires. Also, an effort is being made to spread the Malay language among the rank and file; at headquarters and branches, officers are attending classes in Malay and now, in consultation with government, the NUPW is providing facilities for workers to attend regular Malay classes in estate schools.

With its multiracial membership, its leaders believe the Union cannot afford the divisive effect of political interference. NARAYANAN feels strongly that joining and supporting a political party must be strictly a personal matter for each member, so that in a democratic Malaya the trade union will be free to bring pressure on any Government. The NUPW operates on a purely trade union basis and has concentrated upon building a formidable workers' weapon that can be used aggressively, when circumstances require, but always constitutionally.

The NUPW surprised the Malayan trade union world when it announced, in 1955, a campaign to collect funds to build its own headquarters. The building was completed on the eve of Merdeka, or Malayan Independence, with M$209,306.07 raised in voluntary contributions of M$2 from members and M$209,838.09 paid from general funds. A giant leap from the tiny room at the top of narrow stairs over an odorous dried fish shop, Plantation House stands today in Kuala Lumpur as a splendid monument to the pioneers in the rubber industry and its trade union movement—the assembly hall with a seating capacity of 1,000 was named by the workers after H. N. Ridley, founder of the industry in Malaya who died in 1957 at the age of 100. In Plantation House are the Union's secretarial and administrative offices, industrial relations department, executive council chamber, research section, public relations department, photographic section, and union library. On the second floor are air-conditioned guest rooms with six beds where visitors from international trade unions come and stay. Members in Kuala Lumpur on private business are accommodated similarly, with space for 40 of them at any one time. Similar facilities are given when members come for residential trade union courses.

Aware of the necessity to keep in close touch with members, the NUPW is the only union in Malaya today owning its own modern printing press and publishing its own newspaper, both located in an annex to Plantation House. The Tamil edition, Sangamani, sells some 16,000 copies an issue and is the widest circulated Tamil paper in the Federation. First published weekly beginning in May 1952, it became biweekly in 1956 when Suara Kesatuan and Kong Sing Pau, the Malay and Chinese editions, were started. Circulation of the latter two editions is now about 4,000. June 1957 was a black month when 45 newspaper employees went on strike; the unprecedented strike within a union lasted 23 days. Previously sold for 15 Malayan cents per copy, in 1958 the newspapers were trimmed to minimum size so they could be distributed free. A consequent reorganization took place, and some 30 employees were relieved of their duties with three months ex gratia payment. A monthly magazine in English, the Union Herald, was added in May 1958. Both Government and employers watch these publications for criticisms and complaints which are generally fair. Discovering writing talent among estate workers, the newspaper editors are flooded with poems, short stories and articles as well as many "letters to the editor." Political discussions are included in the periodicals only when the subject affects workers in general and plantation workers in particular.

An authoritative history of the NUPW, tracing its development from the origins of the five unions amalgamated in 1954 was completed in 1959 by Charles Gamba, lecturer in economics at the University of Malaya. The Executive Council commissioned the work, providing a sum well over M$2,000 for one year of research writing. A sympathetic observer of the Malayan trade union movement, Dr. Gamba agreed to assign the royalties to the educational fund of the NUPW to benefit the children of estate workers. The book is in print and is expected to be out by the first week of October 1962.

A project of the public relations department established in 1957 was a film "Doing Nicely, Thank You," which has been shown in cinema houses and plantations throughout the country. The industrial relations section, sharing with the legal department responsibility for settling disputes, also trains recruits and each state branch has a trained industrial relations officer. An insurance scheme provides sick and accident benefits with a lump sum available to workers at 55 years of age or to beneficiaries at death of a policyholder. As of March 31, 1959, 2,476 members had availed themselves of this protection. In 1960, the Union started a system of awarding scholarships to needy but promising workers’ children. Mr. NARAYANAN went against 2,000 years of tradition when he stopped accepting "garlands" on ceremonial occasions and instead collected small payments as donations to the education fund.

NARAYANAN considers research and education the two pillars for advancement of trade unionism in Asia, and both have been given priority attention by the NUPW. A research department, formed in 1955 and headed by an economist graduated from Madras University, provides ammunition for wage negotiations and watches vigilantly the trends in the plantation industries in Malaya and abroad by analyzing company and government reports and financial statements.

Recently cited by the MTUC as the only Malayan union equipped for running training programs, the NUPW has devoted a major effort to education of its officers and members. Forming the nucleus of teachers are 10 officials who have taken the three months course for union officers at the ICFTU Asian Trade Union College in Calcutta. Six of these men later received Colombo Plan scholarships to attend a three-months industrial relations course in the United Kingdom and another two completed a Training Within Industry course given by the Ministry of Labor in Singapore. One of the Calcutta graduates made a study tour of Australia, a senior officer made a UNESCO study tour of unions in Japan and the Philippines, and one attended the three-months course at the Labor Education Center, University of the Philippines. Similar training opportunities are extended to other leaders as a matter of policy.

Since 1954 the NPUW Director of Education, who is also Deputy Secretary General, has conducted three-day courses for union estate committeemen on how they should attend to the affairs of members. To these men NARAYANAN stresses: "Break with the old tradition that a trade union exists only to improve wages. There are other aspects of life and times of a unionist which we must look after—his home, the welfare of his wife and children, his own education."

Weekend courses for the rank and file, in Malay, Chinese and Tamil, were arranged with the help of the Training Section of the Federation Ministry of Labor and Industrial Relations and the organizer of trade union classes of the MTUC. Subjects include the practice and principles of trade unionism; the structure, organization and aims of the NUPW; industrial relations; economics for trade unionists; negotiation machinery; and civic responsibilities. Workers' classes on estates also cover care of a home, hygiene, child care and vegetable and poultry raising. Officers attend seminars, consultative sessions and refresher courses. They are also called upon to lecture at universities, high schools and by civic organizations from time to time. The Union has purchased a bus at a cost of M$35,000 for transporting staff and members from all over the Federation to Plantation House to attend these classes, and a sum of M$25,000 a year was earmarked for education work since 1961.

Not only contributing to Malayan development, several of the NUPW's second and third level leaders made Malayan trade union history when they went out to help plantation workers improve their organizations in Indonesia, Vietnam, Ceylon, India and West Africa.

NARAYANAN hopes for a Trade Union Education Fund at the MTUC level to spread education in Malaya. Meanwhile, the Council is intensifying training at all levels to encourage leadership from industry itself, and the NUPW has made Plantation House available for classes sponsored by MTUC and assisted with materials. "Knowledge is power." is the slogan of NUPW.

In a plantation industry where 60 per cent of the workers are of Indian origin, the NUPW is making every endeavor to increase the number of Chinese and Malay members, and the psychological barriers are gradually being overcome. NARAYANAN’s goal is ultimately to bring together the 300,000 workers of all plantations in Malaya. The Union is now developing a plan of action for tea and oil palm workers. Coconut and coffee plantation workers are next on the agenda. Meanwhile, collective bargaining based on mutual respect has been established on an industry-wide basis between the MPIEA and the NUPW, and improvements achieved in these negotiations benefit all plantation workers.

In addition to higher wages, common practices on Malayan plantations today are severance pay and workmen's compensation, medical attention and maternity benefits and education for workers' children. The barracks in which workers' families once lived and brackish wells where they drew water have given way on many estates to homes with piped water and electricity, with radios, newspapers and good food. Some are situated outside of the estate, giving workers freedom to live their own lives after working hours.

The Union now is urging attention to a Federal citizenship campaign for noncitizen members, land settlement schemes for employees, improvement of health facilities, provision for aged and unemployed workers and kindergartens for workers' children. A pressing concern is introduction of legislation to check fragmentation of estates, which in recent years has caused loss of work to a settled labor force of 12,000. Acutely conscious that natural rubber must be competitive with synthetic, Mr. NARAYANAN feels a minimum wage plus an incentive scheme is imperative if workers are to produce more, and the idea has been accepted by the rubber industry. The NUPW favors rates linked to overall productivity rather than the price of rubber, but does not want to apply this principle until young high yielding trees come into production.

A keen observer of union progress in other occupations and a strong supporter of the MTUC, P. P. NARAYANAN believes Malaya's soundly based free trade unions have important duties to discharge in terms of the country's future: "Trade unions are concerned with the nature and extent of plans for economic development of a country. They can make effective contributions to increased productivity which can help meet requirements of capital formation for economic development, they can help in effective utilization of physical and material resources, they can help create stable economic and political conditions, and they encourage and promote skill formation and give vital inspiration to workers."

In early 1962, Mr. NARAYANAN was chairman of a three-man mission of the ICFTU Asian Regional Organization to make contact with trade unions in North Borneo, Sarawak and Brunei, the three territories envisaged in plans for Greater Malaysia: "While politicians go on consulting concerning constitutional changes, we in the free trade unions will have to think in terms of solidifying workers' movements in these regions . . . and endeavor to have useful contacts. Workers should guard against being made scapegoats by powerful industries and power politics."

P. P. NARAYANAN also has broadened his perspective by studying conditions of plantation workers in other areas beginning with Singapore where, in 1952, he collected data on the number of workers employed, those without work, pay scales and benefits. In 1954, he made a study tour of plantation areas in Sumatra and, in 1955, of India and Ceylon.

In 1953, he was one of four representatives of the Federal Legislative Council to attend the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and thereafter studied trade unions in Europe before representing the MTUC at the ICFTU Conference and the Malayan Labor Party at the 3rd Socialist International Conference in Stockholm. In 1955, he was elected Chairman of the First Southeast Asia Plantation Conference called in Malaya by the ICFTU. He toured the United States on a Leader Grant from the United States Information Service, visiting enroute Japan and the Philippines, where he presented diplomas to trainees at the University of the Philippines Labor Education Center. Later, he attended the ILO Conference in Geneva as Adviser to the British Delegation. In the same year he attended the 5th ICFTU World Congress in Tunis as Chief Workers Delegate from Malaya, the ICFTU Plantation Conference and the Afro-Asian Conference also in Tunis. He represented Malaya again at the 6th World Congress of the ICFTU in Geneva in 1959 and also attended the inaugural Conference of International Plantation, Agriculture and Allied Workers Conference in Brussels where he was unanimously elected as the first Asian member on the Executive Board.

Leading the Malayan delegation to the ICFTU Asian Regional Organization Conference (ARO) at Manila in 1960, he was elected unanimously ARO Chairman by delegates from 15 countries representing 6.5 million workers, succeeding Jose V. Hernandez of the Philippines who had held the post for six years. Urging a change of policy, he proposed the ICFTU-ARO "waste no more effort on a negative anti-Communist approach and instead emphasize what democracy can deliver to the people." On this theme, he later added: "The concern of trade unions with democracy is obvious—they can hardly exist or properly function under a dictatorship or a totalitarian regime, they have a vested interest in democracy; on the other hand they are indispensable to democracy and its bulwark, their action an extension of political and economic democracy for the people as a whole."

A policy statement for the ARO was drawn up in Kuala Lumpur and adopted in Saigon in 1960. The slogan adopted by the ICFTU-ARO under his chairmanship the same year was "dedication, dynamism, drive and dues." At the conference he emphasized that Asian affiliates must pay their affiliation fees and keep only dues-paying members on the registers. Whereas during the political struggle many voluntary workers came forward to assist the unions and financial resources were poor, this tradition should be discontinued so that unions could be independent of political domination and able to conduct agitation, after taking into consideration the economic position of the industries concerned, ascertained through careful economic research.

In 1961, Mr. NARAYANAN again visited Stockholm for the Swedish Labor Conference in his capacity as the Chairman of ARO. In early 1962, he made a lecture tour of the United States as guest of Michigan State University. During this tour he met Vice President Lyndon Johnson and Senator Stewart Symington and discussed with them U.S. stockpile releases of tin and rubber and the adverse effects on the Malayan economy. Later in June he attended the ICFTU-ARO Education Committee meeting in Calcutta and the 7th ICFTU World Congress in Berlin.

In Malaya, he serves as member and leader of the workers group in the National Joint Labor Advisory Council formed in 1957 of 19 representatives each of trade unions and employers, the Port Swettenham Board and the Government Housing Trust and Central Electricity Board. One of the Governors of the Lady Templar Tuberculosis Hospital, he also was a founder-member of the Pure Life Society orphanage which looks after about 860 children at Puchong. A good mixer, he was the first Malayan trade unionist to be elected president of a Rotary Club at Seremban, Negri Sembilan in 1950.

Married in 1947 to Sreemathi M. K. Dukshayani, he has two sons and one daughter. An avid reader of philosophy, his avocations, "apart from improving conditions of workers," are short story writing and painting, and lately he has tried his hand at composing. Two of his short story books in Malayalam, Kudi Kascha (The Interview) and Iruttile Velicham (Light in Darkness), have been published, and his poems have appeared in Jaya Kahalam, Kairali and Prabha, Malayalam journals published in Singapore and Malaya. He also regularly contributes articles to union publications in Malaya and other countries A linguist, in addition to his mother tongue, Malayalam, he speaks Malay, Tamil, Hindustani and English.

P. P. NARAYANAN is readily approachable and likes hard work. He does not measure success in money but takes satisfaction in being employed full time by the NUPW. In 16 years of dedication to the proposition that workers deserve to be treated with fairness and respect, he has demonstrated in his relations with both employer and worker an abiding faith in social justice and the dignity of man.

August 1962
Manila

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