. . . the Commission’s recommendation that NUTA leaders should be
elected by the members themselves . . . resulted from the view of the
civil servants that a leader nominated by the President cannot defend
their interests freely and efficiently. Such views are relevant only in
countries where the economy and the government are in the hands of
capitalists. . . . Our government has never had the desire to exploit
workers, but aims at raising the standard of living of workers and the
nation as a whole. It is a government of workers and peasants . . . (and)
we know that we have the freedom to decide things: and our decision
was to give one man the power to choose leaders for us.

We do not know of any government in the world which ex-
presses the ‘desire to exploit workers’ and which does not claim to
aim ‘at raising the standard of living of workers and the nation as
a whole'. There was hence no serious argument presented for the
control of the selection of the leaders of the trade union
organisation.

Apart from this control by the state bureaucracy, there were
two major aspects of a positive nature in the sixties as far as the
working class was concerned. First, independence was followed
by considerable improvements in living conditions for the bulk of
the labour force in wage employment. In 1962 the government
had passed legislation regarding minimum wages for workers and
later introduced various welfare benefits for them: severance pay,
employment security provisions, fringe benefits, annual benefits
and provident fund contributions. Thus, though as a result of the
drastic fall in the world market price for sisal, total wage em-
ployment in the country fell by 20 per cent between 1960 and
1966, there was an average increase in real earnings for wage em-
ployees of some 80 per cent during the six years. All this
dramatically changed the migrant character of labour and there
began to develop a stable working class which was rapidly in-
creasing its productivity much faster than the increase in its
wages. In manufacturing, total output increased by some 288 per
cent by 1967 over the 1960 figure.

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