Early each morning at the main bus stands of the Biyagama and Katunayake export processing zones near Colombo's international airport, a few thousand men mill around. Their purpose is not travel but to meet the 'brokers' or representatives of recruitment agents, who hire on the spot based on 'orders' for workers received from factory human-resource managers. These temporary workers fill daily or seasonal labour shortages in the readymade garment and other export-oriented industries in Sri Lanka that employ over 350,000 workers inside and outside industrial zones and parks. There are 2.5 million workers – around 54 percent of the combined public and private sector workforce (excluding cultivators in the rural economy) – in precarious forms of employment, according to the official 2012 Labour Force Survey.
Meanwhile, on the eve of Sri Lanka's presidential election in January 2015, the space opened by political competition for votes provided a rare opportunity for sections of the working class to highlight issues usually ignored by the government. Electricity, water board, and state bank employees staged walk-outs and picketed offices to demand that temporary workers in state institutions be made permanent, and that all future recruitments be made directly to the permanent cadre and not through private agencies. In late December 2014, the Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT) head office was blockaded by temporary workers demanding secure employment on equal terms with those on permanent contracts. The agitation ended when the management obtained a court order to remove them.
While the 'in-sourcing' of workers hired from recruitment agencies is commonly associated with the unorganised private sector, this practice has spread to public sector and semi-state workplaces such as SLT. In addition to the insecurity of employment, despite continuous service extending over 10 to 15 years, temporary workers in the public sector are denied the holiday leave, pension and bonus entitlements of co-workers that are permanently employed. These workers are non-unionised, more likely to be in hazardous employment, and lack basic rights. Their salaries are paid to them by the recruitment agency that is their nominal employer, after deduction of the agency's hefty commission. It is not uncommon for the name of the agency to be unknown to workers, who instead call the labour contractor by the eponymous 'Manpower'. The identity of the employer is masked, deliberately causing confusion as to the point of accountability for workers' rights and benefits.
Temporary workers are often treated as scabs by trade unions and permanent employees, and these divisions among workers have played into the hands of employers who exploit it to the hilt, as in the case of Sri Lanka Telecom. In this instance, two of the larger branch unions objected to absorption of temporary workers into the permanent cadre, and threatened industrial action of their own in the event of such action. Inexplicably, it was these unions and not management that claimed the increase in the number of permanent staff would be detrimental to the profitability of the company because of increasing salaries and benefits costs. The fact that corporate super-profits are made by extreme exploitation of temporary workers, who receive lower wages and no superannuation benefits, was ignored.