The Labour Movement and Party Politics in Malaysia

Abstract

This manuscript aims at examining the relationship between working class cleavage and party politics in Malaysia. My focus will be on the way in which conservative elites in Malaysia have suppressed the labour movement for the purpose of maintaining and consolidating their dominances. The labour movement of Malaysia has been impeded by lack of autonomy against external structure and by internal division. Externally, economic elites, employers have dwarfed labour in organizational capacity and finance, and ruling elites, governments have silenced the labour movement through police and suppressive laws. In the process, political and economic elites capitalized on ethnic cleavage and overshadowed class cleavage. Combined with this external restriction, trade unionism has been limited by internal division within and among trade unions. These already weakened unions have thus failed to exert power in politics, let alone to establish socialist parties in Malaysia.