The build­ing ag­gres­sion in the labour move­ment with lead­ers and their mem­ber­ship mak­ing their de­mands for a greater piece of the pie re­sem­bles the ag­i­ta­tion of the late 1980s af­ter the price of oil had col­lapsed, which led to the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment be­ing vot­ed out of of­fice af­ter 25 years in pow­er. As a re­sult of the change in the coun­try's eco­nom­ic for­tunes, fol­low­ing the change in gov­ern­ment in 1986, the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion was forced to im­ple­ment a range of aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures to cope with the dra­mat­ic fall in fis­cal rev­enues.

The in­ten­si­ty of the protests in 1987 and 1988 has not yet reached that lev­el in 2010, and hope­ful­ly it will not reach that lev­el. But as re­port­ed in our news pages yes­ter­day, there is the po­ten­tial for se­ri­ous con­flict be­tween em­ploy­ers and their work­ers. Much of the build­ing protest is con­cen­trat­ed in the state sec­tor with the pub­lic ser­vice unions feel­ing that their mem­bers need ur­gent at­ten­tion and that their salaries have been erod­ed by in­fla­tion.?

TSTT work­ers have their own grouse with their claim that while the com­pa­ny has "fixed-up" man­agers with high mid-year bonus­es, work­ers' salaries and oth­er ben­e­fits re­main un­at­tend­ed. And there are the pro­test­ers on the road too about the promised smelter project.

Then there is the cler­i­cal and teach­ing staff at the ear­ly learn­ing cen­tres, maxi-taxi dri­vers, work­ers at the Arcelor/Mit­tal plant protest­ing the al­leged fail­ure of their em­ploy­er to pay them the sum of US$11.8 mil­lion go­ing back 16 years. With­out seek­ing to analyse and com­ment on the mer­its or de­mer­its of the sev­er­al in­dus­tri­al dis­putes, it must be clear to all that an over-boil­ing of dis­con­tent with re­sult­ing im­pacts on the econ­o­my, on jobs, pro­duc­tion and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of great an­tag­o­nism spread through­out the so­ci­ety is not in the in­ter­est of any­one.?

Even in the most af­flu­ent of so­ci­eties, re­sources are fi­nite and there must be lim­its to how far those re­sources can be spread. In such cir­cum­stances and in the present eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, re­straint is a by­word as mea­sures are tak­en to stim­u­late growth out of the re­ces­sion of 2008-2009.?As that point is made, how­ev­er, there must al­so be the recog­ni­tion of the need for an eq­ui­table shar­ing of the bur­den of ad­just­ment. It can­not be that work­ers alone are to be ex­pect­ed to be rea­son­able in their de­mands.

The ex­treme prof­its of the good times lead­ing up to 2008 can­not con­tin­ue in­to the present and em­ploy­ers and in­vestors must un­der­stand that en­claves of ex­ces­sive prof­its will not last in a so­ci­ety un­der stress.

We need in this coun­try to look around at the mea­sure of suc­cess achieved in Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica with em­ploy­ers, em­ploy­ees and their trade unions work­ing out an en­tente, a mu­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial agree­ment to achieve peace and suc­cess in the hope of po­si­tion­ing those economies to ben­e­fit when eco­nom­ic growth be­gins to re­turn. Go­ing back to the 1995-2001 pe­ri­od of the Pan­day regime, the then prime min­is­ter and his for­mer trade union col­leagues and the em­ploy­ers' as­so­ci­a­tions be­gan draft­ing a tri­par­tite com­pact to achieve peace and progress. Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning be­gan to ex­press some mea­sure of in­ter­est in tri­par­tite co-op­er­a­tion on­ly in his last year in of­fice when the re­al­i­ty of de­clin­ing rev­enues hit home.

This Gov­ern­ment is ide­al­ly po­si­tioned to re­turn to a tri­par­tite ap­proach to sta­bilise in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions. First of all, the Gov­ern­ment is new and does not have in­dus­tri­al bag­gage to drag be­hind it. Sec­ond­ly, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has shown a greater will­ing­ness to lis­ten and con­sult than her im­me­di­ate pre­de­ces­sor. Per­haps most for­tu­itous for the Gov­ern­ment and coun­try is the po­si­tion­ing of ca­reer labour leader Er­rol McLeod as Min­is­ter of Labour. As a past mas­ter of the gen­er­al strike threat, Com­rade McLeod cer­tain­ly re­tains a mea­sure of cred­i­bil­i­ty among labour lead­ers and can reach out to his for­mer col­leagues to en­gage in di­a­logue aimed at quelling counter-pro­duc­tive demon­stra­tions.

Giv­en his ca­pac­i­ty for time­ly talk, this is a course of ac­tion that is rec­om­mend­ed for Mr McLeod.