By Narayana Menon and Chris Leggett
This paper reviews the history of the National Union of Plantation Workers from its origins in the uncertainties of the political outcome of the end of the British colonial administrations in the Malayan peninsular through to the dramatic changes taking place in the Federation of Malaysia as that country fast reaches industrialised status.
From its ethnic place in the plura1 order of things under the aristocratic Jed Government ofTengku Abdul Rahman, the Indian-dominated NUPW, it is argued, achieved little in terms of real improvements in the lives of plantation workers as a confrontational union and has not been all that successful in cooperative and other business adventures.
As industrial relations have been moulded and remoulded to meet the imperatives of a more national scheme of things and competition for investors and markets stepped up, the NUPW is likely to be increasingly marginalised. overtaken by the rapidity of industrialisation and the structural changes which have accompanied it
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