Raphael John-Lall

The Gov­ern­ment must do more to en­sure that the col­lec­tive-bar­gain­ing sys­tem works if it wants to in­crease pro­duc­tiv­i­ty dur­ing pe­ri­ods of eco­nom­ic down­turn, says labour con­sul­tant Robert Giusep­pi."There are some 70,000 to 80,000 peo­ple who are cov­ered by col­lec­tive agree­ments in the pub­lic sec­tor. What has the Gov­ern­ment done over the last ten years to en­sure that col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing be­comes cre­ative? They must look at oth­er ar­eas and oth­er prin­ci­ples of col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing when these ses­sions of aus­ter­i­ty and re­ces­sion ex­ist, so cre­ative col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing would be able to deal with these ses­sions."He was speak­ing on Tues­day at the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce's sec­ond pre-bud­get pan­el dis­cus­sion at its of­fices in West­moor­ings. Giusep­pi blamed trade union­ists for a lax ap­proach to the col­lec­tive-bar­gain­ing process. "Some trade union­ists have aban­doned the con­cept of col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing, so what is con­tin­u­ing to ex­ist among all the ac­tors in the in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions sys­tem is a lack of trust and con­fi­dence. The Gov­ern­ment, as an em­ploy­er, con­tin­ues to have a mis­guid­ed ap­proach to col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing."

Giusep­pi gave the ex­am­ple of trade union­ists who are not time­ly and are ne­go­ti­at­ing col­lec­tive agree­ments in 2012 for the 2008-2010 pe­ri­od. "How could both par­ties sign a col­lec­tive agree­ment, which is a con­tract be­tween both par­ties, for a time that has al­ready passed? Are we go­ing back­wards?" Giusep­pi said un­der the hu­man re­source man­age­ment sys­tem in the Pub­lic Ser­vice, in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions has tak­en a back po­si­tion. "The pub­lic sec­tor has no ma­chin­ery in place to deal with col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing. We must ad­dress this as col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing prac­tices are be­ing ig­nored." Giusep­pi gave the ex­am­ple of a doc­u­ment the Na­tion­al Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty Coun­cil got from the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion ti­tled, Trans­form­ing the Pub­lic Ser­vice through Re­new­al and Or­gan­i­sa­tion. "There was on­ly one men­tion of trade unions in the doc­u­ment. Yet there are thou­sands of work­ers there un­der col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing. We have to ask: how does this af­fect and in­crease pro­duc­tiv­i­ty." Giusep­pi ad­vised all stake­hold­ers in in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions to stop play­ing the blame game and deal with ex­ist­ing is­sues. "When you ne­go­ti­ate a col­lec­tive agree­ment be­yond its time pe­ri­od, you cause work­ers to be frus­trat­ed. They must de­mand more for work­ers-the de­cent work agen­da, the so­cial agen­da. Unions must ed­u­cate them­selves and their mem­ber­ships."

De­f­i­n­i­tion of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty

Giusep­pi, who is a mem­ber of the Na­tion­al Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty Coun­cil, said the coun­cil is now work­ing on defin­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty with­in a lo­cal con­text. "When you look at pro­duc­tiv­i­ty strict­ly in an eco­nom­ic way, it does not go any­where. There­fore, to en­cour­age in­creas­es in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty at a work­place, we must look at so­cial, eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal fac­tors that im­pact on the world of work in T&T." Giusep­pi said the pri­vate sec­tor is ahead of the pub­lic sec­tor in wage ne­go­ti­a­tions. "When you look at it the pri­vate sec­tor, it seems to be do­ing some things the pub­lic sec­tor is not do­ing. Over the last few years, our eco­nom­ic cli­mate has cre­at­ed pres­sure on labour and em­ploy­ee re­la­tions, most­ly over ne­go­ti­a­tions and col­lec­tive agree­ments. The Gov­ern­ment's mon­e­tary ap­proach has not been able to raise the right de­gree of com­fort to the in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions cli­mate."

He crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment for hav­ing a ceil­ing of five per cent dur­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions, call­ing it a fool­ish ap­proach. "How can the Gov­ern­ment, which is the em­ploy­er, of­fer carte blanche five per cent, which is a one-sided pro­pos­al, for all sec­tors of gov­ern­ment ser­vices? Some state en­ter­pris­es are mak­ing mon­ey like First Cit­i­zens Bank. There­fore, it was a fool­ish ap­proach of this one-sided sys­tem for col­lec­tive agree­ments. This is one of the prob­lems we have been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing."

Giusep­pi be­lieves a bet­ter in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions sys­tem and more ef­fec­tive col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing would help to share the coun­try's wealth more eq­ui­tably. "With re­gards to the re­dis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth, we have a po­si­tion with col­lec­tive agree­ments. It is an un­fair re­dis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth at this time, and this is where we, and peo­ple like the Cham­ber of Com­merce, must look at in a broad­er way. "There is al­so un­or­gan­ised labour with no union. You are look­ing at lack of job op­por­tu­ni­ties, lack of rep­re­sen­ta­tion, lack of pro­tec­tion as far as job se­cu­ri­ty is con­cerned and is­sues of re­trench­ment."

Unions' rel­e­vance

Giusep­pi said trade unions rep­re­sent work­ers' in­ter­ests and will al­ways be rel­e­vant. "When I start­ed off in in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions and I was study­ing, they asked: are trade unions a nec­es­sary evil?' My an­swer was be­cause of the evils that ex­ist in the sys­tem, trade unions be­come nec­es­sary." He point­ed out that this coun­try's eco­nom­ic sys­tem is a free mar­ket and cap­i­tal­ist one and it is sim­i­lar to what is hap­pen­ing around the world where there is much greed. "We are un­der a cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem and, in many ar­eas, it cre­ates greed and so of­ten the sys­tem col­laps­es. Some peo­ple agree that they must get more than any­one else and the more they get, the more they want. That greed is where the evil lies. It will al­ways af­fect the sys­tem." He used the present case of the Unit­ed King­dom's Li­bor-fix­ing scan­dal in­volv­ing Bar­clays Bank to high­light his ar­gu­ment. "Over the week­end, we saw on BBC News the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Bar­clays Bank and he is un­der pres­sure. He is earn­ing £5 mil­lion a month and is still in­volved in rack­et. So this is what greed is caus­ing and it has to be elim­i­nat­ed.

"Work­ers still have to have a sit­u­a­tion where they can put for­ward their ideas and be able to de­fend their rights and in­ter­ests."