Raphael John-Lall

One of T&T's trade unions' most sig­nif­i­cant plan of ac­tion for 2011 was their threat to shut down the coun­try in protest of the Gov­ern­ment's five per cent wage of­fer for pub­lic ser­vants.The Gov­ern­ment's im­po­si­tion of the state of emer­gency from Au­gust 22, 2011, put that plan in abeyance. A key fea­ture of that call is that con­gre­ga­tion on the streets would be in breach of the emer­gency reg­u­la­tions.

The state of emer­gency will of­fi­cial­ly come to an end on De­cem­ber 5.What will be the trade unions' next plan?Dr An­tho­ny N Sab­ga, chair­man emer­i­tus of the ANSA McAL Group, an em­ploy­er of 5,500 peo­ple in T&T alone, last week Wednes­day said trade unions need to stop be­ing con­fronta­tion­al and mod­ernise their ap­proach to labour re­la­tions.

In this way, com­pa­nies will be prof­itable and work­ers will be sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly pro­vid­ed for, Sab­ga said.He was speak­ing at a Lead­er­ship Lec­ture Se­ries, host­ed by the Em­ploy­ers' Con­sul­ta­tive As­so­ci­a­tion (ECA), at the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad ho­tel, Dock Road, Port-of-Spain. Giv­en that state­ment, the ECA and the labour move­ment gave their views to the Busi­ness Guardian and their as­sess­ment of labour re­la­tions in 2011.

Lesmore Fred­er­ick, head lec­tur­er, labour stud­ies, Cipri­ani Col­lege of Labour and Co-op­er­a­tive Stud­ies, said he is "dis­ap­point­ed" with what hap­pened in 2011."What hap­pened since 2010 has left unions look­ing at the Gov­ern­ment as a be­tray­al of their trust. One of the func­tions of trade unions is to en­gage in po­lit­i­cal in­flu­ence. That is not unique to T&T. You see the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the Trade Union Con­gress (TUC) and British Labour Par­ty? It's the same with the Caribbean."

Fred­er­ick said the dif­fer­ent ide­o­log­i­cal in­ter­ests may have led to some of labour's needs not be­ing met."I don't know what goes on in Cab­i­net, but it has to be tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion that there are dif­fer­ent in­ter­ests in the Part­ner­ship. You have the COP, UNC and MSJ in­ter­ests."

He gave the ex­am­ple of the first UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion and the sup­port it had from some trade unions to get sup­port for crit­i­cal pieces of labour leg­is­la­tion."Some of the trade unions in the past sup­port­ed the first UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion and some of the labour leg­is­la­tion to­day came in­to ex­is­tence dur­ing that time. The Ma­ter­ni­ty Pro­tec­tion Ben­e­fit Act, the ini­ti­a­tion of the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Act (OS­HA), the Min­i­mum Wage Or­der. One of the last­ing achieve­ments of the Pan­day Ad­min­is­tra­tion were those pieces of leg­is­la­tion."

He ar­gued that trade unions are ex­pect­ing sim­i­lar con­ces­sions un­der this ad­min­is­tra­tion."The Part­ner­ship with MSJ and oth­er fac­tions would have ex­pect­ed sim­i­lar things un­der the present ad­min­is­tra­tion. If MSJ and unions are un­able to achieve such ob­jec­tives, then it would af­fect func­tions of unions and the Part­ner­ship it­self."The in­ter­view was con­duct­ed at Fred­er­ick's of­fice at the Val­sayn north-based col­lege on Sat­ur­day.

Con­flict ap­proach

Com­ment­ing on unions' con­fronta­tion­al ap­proach, Fred­er­ick said if the Gov­ern­ment wants to see a dif­fer­ent ap­proach, it should amend the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act (IRA)."If you want trade unions to move away from that, then you should amend the IRA. The IRA al­lows for col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing and unions to take in­dus­tri­al ac­tion. I don't think unions start off be­ing ad­ver­sar­i­al, but as the qual­i­ty of ne­go­ti­a­tions breaks down, then they adopt the ad­ver­sar­i­al ap­proach."

While busi­ness en­ti­ties like the ECA have con­demned unions as be­ing too con­fronta­tion­al, Fred­er­ick ar­gued that the ECA has its own agen­da and its ide­ol­o­gy is in­her­ent­ly dif­fer­ent from that of trade unions."That's the role of the ECA. They are like the union for em­ploy­ers. I ex­pect them to be­have a cer­tain way. I think the ECA has its own val­ues and at­ti­tude and they take in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions from a uni­tary ap­proach and I don't think it is wrong. How­ev­er, unions take the con­flict ap­proach. The unions are there to en­sure the eco­nom­ic well-be­ing of work­ers and cur­tail the pre­rog­a­tives of man­age­ment. Both par­ties need to re­view their ap­proach to col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing. There needs to be trust."

Fred­er­ick said that "se­ri­ous" in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions no longer ex­ist in T&T."We no longer en­gage in sin­cere di­a­logue, we no longer try to lis­ten on both sides. We sim­ply don't bring in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions in­to the pic­ture. I'm not sure if the Gov­ern­ment sees in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions as nec­es­sary. In to­day's econ­o­my, col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing is giv­ing way to in­di­vid­ual em­ploy­ee con­tracts. Mod­ern gov­ern­ments and lead­ers don't know about col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing. All they know is guide­lines set by In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. The dis­re­gard for job se­cu­ri­ty is a re­al is­sue."

He said unions have to adopt new strate­gies to sur­vive."How else would you pro­tect the rights of work­ers and job se­cu­ri­ty? Will the em­ploy­er do it? The em­ploy­er is in­volved in the pro­duc­tion of goods and ser­vices. There­fore, the union has a role, but unions need to en­gage in strate­gic plan­ning to re­view their roles to sur­vive. They can­not op­er­ate the way (Tubal Uri­ah "Buzz, found­ing fa­ther of the Oil­field Work­ers' Trade Union) But­ler used to op­er­ate. Things have changed. The is­sue of new union­ism is re­quired."

In­dus­tri­al re­la­tions in 2012

Fred­er­ick said the dif­fer­ent stake­hold­ers must work to­geth­er."This is where the is­sue of trust comes in. If the em­ploy­ers an­tic­i­pate that the unions would start up ac­tion, then what would we do? The is­sue of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion is re­quired."He ad­vis­es that the Min­istry of Labour must take a greater role in bring sta­bil­i­ty to the in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions en­vi­ron­ment in T&T.

"The Min­istry of Labour, which is re­spon­si­ble for labour ad­min­is­tra­tion, should be­come more proac­tive in ad­vis­ing the way for­ward. To­day, we have prob­lems re­lat­ing to labour ad­min­is­tra­tion at the na­tion­al lev­el and the min­istry's role is cru­cial at this time. In Com­pact 2000, the ECA, Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (Natuc) and the then UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion, pledged to do cer­tain things and be­fore the 2012, these stake­hold­ers should go back to that doc­u­ment."

On the is­sue of the five per cent of­fered by the chief per­son­nel of­fi­cer (CPO) this year, he called the CPO a "mouth­piece.""The mat­ter is big­ger than the CPO and it has to do with the po­lit­i­cal econ­o­my. At the end of the day, is five per cent a de­cent wage? The new par­a­digm in labour man­age­ment is­sue is not just the fi­nan­cial is­sue. Labour is not a phys­i­cal as­set and we must have a new en­vi­ron­ment dri­ven by in­no­va­tion, cre­ativ­i­ty and in­ter­ac­tion at all lev­els."

He urged the Min­istry of Labour to take ac­tion now."I hope that the Min­istry of Labour, as the Gov­ern­ment in­sti­tu­tion, gets in­volve in this new par­a­digm. We can­not sit idly by and spec­u­late about the prob­lem."