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Saturday, July 5, 2025

A balancing act

by

Guardian Media Limited
13 days ago
20250622

Marvin Smith

Un­sur­pris­ing­ly, Labour Day cel­e­bra­tions last Thurs­day felt bold­er and stronger than in pre­vi­ous years as a di­rect con­se­quence of the UNC’s vic­to­ry at the elec­tion in April, strong­ly and for­mal­ly sup­port­ed by sev­er­al trade unions.

So much so that the new Cab­i­net in­cludes a few for­mer labour lead­ers in crit­i­cal min­istries, from Labour to Pub­lic Util­i­ties and En­er­gy.

This re­newed close­ness be­tween the UNC and the labour move­ment couldn’t have been bet­ter demon­strat­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s de­ci­sion to share the plat­form with union lead­ers at Char­lie King Junc­tion in Fyz­abad.

But this love be­tween trade union lead­ers and Gov­ern­ment, at least at a cer­tain point, will be test­ed by the harsh re­al­i­ties of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s eco­nom­ic chal­lenges and the un­cer­tain­ties we all face at a glob­al lev­el.

The chal­lenge for Gov­ern­ment, though, is to get its en­gage­ment with the labour move­ment right.

Give too much, and Gov­ern­ment risks putting its ac­counts and the coun­try’s econ­o­my in fur­ther trou­ble; give too lit­tle, and the hon­ey­moon may soon be over.

That is why, for their sake and the coun­try’s sake, a bal­ance must be found when Gov­ern­ment, echoed by labour lead­ers, speaks of col­lec­tive agree­ment in­creas­es of at least ten per cent and even more job se­cu­ri­ty for state em­ploy­ees, in­dus­tri­al law re­forms to fur­ther pro­tect work­ers and even the po­ten­tial re­open­ing of the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery.  

A bal­anced ap­proach doesn’t have to equal an an­ti-labour stance, as union lead­ers may claim to be the case.

First, ro­bust mech­a­nisms to pro­tect em­ploy­ees’ rights–unionised or not–are one of the pil­lars of any civilised so­ci­ety, and we should be no dif­fer­ent.

There should al­ways be a place for the labour move­ment in vi­brant, de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­eties, en­sur­ing the right bal­ance be­tween cap­i­tal and labour whilst we al­so ac­knowl­edge what it achieved in the past.

Af­ter all, we should al­ways be thank­ful for those trade union­ists and em­ploy­ees who fought for rights we now take for grant­ed, such as guar­an­teed time off work, paid hol­i­days, and ma­ter­ni­ty leave.

But we must al­so face some hard truths, be­gin­ning with the state sec­tor.

The new Gov­ern­ment is with­in its rights to pro­pose much high­er pay rais­es than what was on the cards un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

But it needs to ex­plain how it will pay for it, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter last week’s bud­get re­view, when it shout­ed as loud as pos­si­ble about Gov­ern­ment’s fi­nan­cial hole be­ing even big­ger than pre­vi­ous­ly thought.

In oth­er words, it is say­ing that the State is in much big­ger trou­ble when it comes to its deficit but is al­so promis­ing con­sid­er­able pay ris­es to state em­ploy­ees, with the in­evitable first whack of back­dat­ed pay­ments fol­lowed by a much high­er to­tal pay­roll bill for years to come.

On top of that, it is promis­ing to look in­to what the unions see as the high num­ber of peo­ple on tem­po­rary con­tracts, with the as­sump­tion be­ing that they should be­come per­ma­nent em­ploy­ees, with the ad­di­tion­al costs the move may bring with­out clear pro­duc­tiv­i­ty gains or pal­pa­ble re­turns to the tax­pay­er.

Ac­tu­al­ly, this is some­thing Gov­ern­ment should pur­sue as a po­ten­tial quid pro quo: the pay may in­crease by a min­i­mum of ten per cent, but this should be linked to pro­duc­tiv­i­ty gains, the meet­ing of rea­son­able per­son­al per­for­mance tar­gets (in­clud­ing low­er lev­els of ab­sen­teeism) and more, not less, flex­i­bil­i­ty so that the num­ber of peo­ple em­ployed by the State doesn’t keep grow­ing with­out a cor­re­spond­ing growth in the econ­o­my and tax re­ceipts.

Oth­er de­mands are hard­er to un­der­stand or jus­ti­fy.

For in­stance, a key ask by some of the labour lead­ers is that state en­ter­pris­es ought to in­clude trade union rep­re­sen­ta­tives on their boards.

But why on­ly them?

State en­ter­pris­es and sim­i­lar en­ti­ties are pub­lic or­gan­i­sa­tions of­ten bailed out by the tax­pay­er due to their on­go­ing deficits, usu­al­ly caused by a mix of poor man­age­ment, aw­ful pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, ar­ti­fi­cial­ly low prices, and bad debts in­curred by sis­ter state bod­ies.

So, what is the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for trade union lead­ers hav­ing a guar­an­teed pres­ence and say in those boards when these or­gan­i­sa­tions are fund­ed by all tax­pay­ers (and es­pe­cial­ly busi­ness-de­rived tax­es)? 

That is even hard­er to ar­gue when, where trade unions are recog­nised, they al­ready have the kind of di­rect con­nec­tion to se­nior man­agers and boards that oth­ers in so­ci­ety, who ef­fec­tive­ly own and pay for these en­ti­ties, will nev­er have. 

And how will they deal with the in­evitable con­flict when con­front­ed with in­for­ma­tion or chal­lenges that may, at least at face val­ue, go di­rect­ly against their mem­ber­ship’s in­ter­ests?

But one thing seems to unite pret­ty much every stake­hold­er: the feel­ing that our labour laws and the in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions cul­ture as a whole ought to change if we are to re­al­ly achieve so­cial jus­tice and pros­per as a na­tion.

And, nat­u­ral­ly, per­spec­tives and opin­ions will be dif­fer­ent. For that rea­son, Gov­ern­ment ought to lis­ten to all sides be­fore putting for­ward crit­i­cal changes to the law.

That means lis­ten­ing to em­ploy­ers in the pri­vate sec­tor but al­so find­ing ways to un­der­stand the wants and needs of the thou­sands of cit­i­zens who, for what­ev­er rea­son, aren’t or don’t want to be rep­re­sent­ed by any trade union.

So, yes, let’s cel­e­brate the labour move­ment’s achieve­ments and the role it played and con­tin­ues to play in shap­ing T&T.

But let’s al­so say yes to a bal­anced and mul­ti­fac­eted look at our labour laws so that we find the right bal­ance be­tween work­ers’ rights and hav­ing a vi­brant and job-cre­at­ing econ­o­my.

This bal­anced view must al­so ap­ply when look­ing at state em­ploy­ees’ salaries and work prac­tices.

If we don’t–and per­haps iron­i­cal­ly–the cost of pop­ulist and ill-thought-through gen­er­ous salary set­tle­ments will end up hav­ing to be paid for by the very same tax-pay­ing, hard-work­ing cit­i­zens whose needs Gov­ern­ment says it is look­ing af­ter.


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