Malaysia: Migrant Workers Unite; Rebel vs. Fascist Oppression

JOHAR BARU, MALAYSIA, Aug.16 — Today, more than 5,000 migrant workers tore down a guard tower that monitored the “company-town” housing they were forced to live in, in this industrial city. They rebelled after a worker died because of the bosses’ racist healthcare system. The workers are undocumented migrant workers from all over the world — Nepal, Myanmar, Vietnam, Bangladesh and India. They united based on their needs as workers and did not let racism defeat their struggle.

The fighting was sparked after an injured staff member died when employers delayed sending him to the hospital. The 20-year-old Nepalese man had contracted a high fever on Sunday. After he became unable to hide how sick he was, the bosses allegedly refused to send him for treatment until it was too late. He died at 7 am the next day. The workers are calling for reforms: the establishment of a mini-clinic at the electronics compound as well as pay increases. Following the rebellion, the managers, now fearing the violence that the workers used, agreed to meet a workers’ representative to discuss problems at the plant in the Tebrau Industrial Area.

Recent reports from NGO Amnesty International have been highly critical of the lack of legal protections and conditions for the migrant workforce in Malaysia, noting: “Migrant workers are critical to Malaysia’s economy, but they systematically receive less legal protection than other workers. They are easy prey for unscrupulous recruitment agents, employers and corrupt police…Migrants are forced to work in hazardous situations, often against their will, and toil for 12 hours a day or more. Many are subject to verbal, physical and sexual abuse…

“Most pay recruitment agents substantial sums of money to secure jobs, work permits and training. Once they arrive, they often find that much of what their agents told them about their new jobs is a lie — the pay, type of work, even the existence of those jobs or their legal status in the country…Most workers have taken out loans at exorbitant interest rates and simply cannot afford to return to their home countries. Nearly all employers hold their workers’ passports, placing workers at risk of arrest and in practice preventing them from leaving abusive workplaces.”

Militant actions like this illustrate the potential that workers have to fight back against the bosses and the ideologies of capitalism such as racism and sexism. Despite the use of force by the workers, the lack of a revolutionary communist party will ensure that the struggle is forced down the dead-end path of reform. The bosses will continue to squeeze as much profit as they can from each worker in order to stay competitive. Even if these workers temporarily “win” these reforms, they will eventually be reversed.

Workers lives will never be improved by the
“legal” system. Laws are written and enforced by the ruling class to protect the “rights” of the bosses to exploit workers.

That is the nature of capitalism, the system of profits we live under today. Capitalism has not met and can never meet the needs of the world’s working class. Though we must be inspired by such uprisings as happened in Malaysia, we have to recognize that these struggles will be for naught unless PLP is built from them.

This is why we need to organize to fight for communism; a society built upon workers’ needs, where the workers lead every aspect of society. Under communism our needs wouldn’t be ignored because of bosses’ needs for profit. There will be no bosses or profits