With the work­ers of Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL) on strike, the Busi­ness Guardian's Aleem Khan con­duct­ed a Q&A with An­drew Sab­ga, pres­i­dent of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, about key in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions is­sues.

Busi­ness Guardian: How is the cur­rent in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions sce­nario im­pact­ing on busi­ness in T&T?

An­drew Sab­ga: Lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors need sev­er­al con­di­tions to be sat­is­fac­to­ry be­fore they put their mon­ey in­to an econ­o­my. One such con­di­tion is a sta­ble in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions cli­mate, and over the past sev­er­al years, threats to shut down the coun­try have ac­com­plished noth­ing but to shake lo­cal and for­eign in­vestor con­fi­dence to the point where the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty is now mov­ing cau­tious­ly with re­spect to in­vest­ments, and is re-eval­u­at­ing the lev­el of risk. In­vestors are weigh­ing their op­tions.

We at the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce are of the view that the cur­rent im­passe at TCL is neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ing the econ­o­my. The con­struc­tion sec­tor-a ma­jor em­ploy­er in T&T-has had to put too many projects on hold be­cause of this im­passe. The con­struc­tion sec­tor has been hit hard.

Small and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es, and con­sumers in gen­er­al, have al­so been im­pact­ed by the im­passe at TCL. Many man­u­fac­tur­ers of con­struc­tion ma­te­r­i­al have had to re­duce their man­pow­er since the strike start­ed. Many con­trac­tors have down­scaled or slowed projects due to the un­avail­abil­i­ty of ma­te­ri­als. When there is less ac­tiv­i­ty in the brick and mor­tar sec­tor, the ef­fects are felt all the way down­stream. This im­passe is hurt­ing con­struc­tion work­ers who are out of work be­cause projects are on hold due to the short­age of ce­ment. Some projects that are mid-stream at present have been de­layed, and as a re­sult, may have to be re­fi­nanced. All this runs up costs. This im­passe is tak­ing a toll on the ef­fi­cien­cy of the sec­tor.

If nine per cent is the new wage ceil­ing, how does that im­pact busi­ness com­pet­i­tive­ness in T&T?

The cham­ber does not sub­scribe to the view that there should be any wage ceil­ing of nine per cent. In fact, the con­ver­sa­tion should not be cen­tred around a wage ceil­ing, but rather the de­bate should be fo­cused on a com­pa­ny's abil­i­ty to pay, on the eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment in which it op­er­ates, and its com­pet­i­tive­ness with­in the mar­ket­place. In many economies, peo­ple are tak­ing wage cuts in or­der to keep their jobs. Most ma­jor economies in the world are feel­ing the im­pact of the glob­al eco­nom­ic slow­down. The economies of Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica are strug­gling. When those economies hurt, our lo­cal econ­o­my will al­so be af­fect­ed be­cause those coun­tries, along with the rest of Cari­com, make up our ma­jor ex­port des­ti­na­tions. Wages should be based on per­for­mance. When you base wages on in­fla­tion, all you're do­ing is fu­elling in­fla­tion. We at the cham­ber are firm­ly of the view that we should not be talk­ing about nine per cent in­crease, but start talk­ing about pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. When this is the fo­cus of the dis­cus­sion, we will have a win-win for every­body. The or­gan­i­sa­tion wins and the work­er wins.

As pres­i­dent of the cham­ber, what words of com­fort could you pro­vide to the af­fect­ed con­struc­tion sec­tor and con­struc­tion work­ers?

Put your house in or­der. Man­age your costs wise­ly. En­sure that you meet your project dead­lines and re­duce waste. Try to keep your heads above wa­ter dur­ing this dif­fi­cult time.

Do you agree with the Min­is­ter of Labour to re­frain from in­vok­ing Sec­tion 65 of the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act to have the In­dus­tri­al Court take ac­tion?

The cham­ber's po­si­tion is that this im­passe is an is­sue of na­tion­al im­por­tance for the rea­sons stat­ed pre­vi­ous­ly. While we recog­nise the min­istry's at­tempts to hold con­cil­ia­to­ry talks with the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union and TCL on two sep­a­rate oc­ca­sions, we call on the min­is­ter to in­voke Sec­tion 65 of the Act and to take the mat­ter to the In­dus­tri­al Court for res­o­lu­tion. We have said so pub­licly and we will con­tin­ue to call for that.

Was the Gov­ern­ment right to hold pub­lic sec­tor wage in­creas­es to five per cent in the con­text of the cur­rent eco­nom­ic sce­nario?

Our po­si­tion is that wages should be based on what they (em­ploy­ers) can af­ford to pay. To say that we am in agree­ment or not is ir­rel­e­vant. What is rel­e­vant is the sit­u­a­tion or the cir­cum­stances with­in which they op­er­ate. Where we should be go­ing is not from five per cent to nine per cent, but to­wards a more com­pet­i­tive mod­el based on com­pe­tence and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. We at the cham­ber will con­tin­ue to pro­mote pay­ment based on per­for­mance. In most pri­vate busi­ness­es in T&T, we have em­ploy­ee per­for­mance ap­praisal sys­tems in place, where, us­ing set and es­tab­lished cri­te­ria, em­ploy­ee per­for­mance can be as­sessed at every lev­el.

What would be your clos­ing mes­sage to all par­ties in­volved in the TCL im­passe?

I urge all par­ties to re­solve this mat­ter ex­pe­di­tious­ly. Trade unions have be­come very con­fronta­tion­al of late and it's not do­ing the econ­o­my any good. It's not do­ing work­ers any good. It's not do­ing con­sumers any good, and it is not do­ing the coun­try any good. It costs the coun­try a lot of mon­ey. What we would like to see is that this sit­u­a­tion be re­solved quick­ly and am­i­ca­bly.