Hamid Ghany

The strike no­tice has been served, the bat­tle lines have been drawn, and to­mor­row we shall know whether the OW­TU will go ahead with its strike ac­tion at Petrotrin if the Gov­ern­ment fails to avert it.

What this mat­ter has re­vealed is the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the State may be held to ran­som if it does not mean­ing­ful­ly ad­dress the wage de­mands of the OW­TU on be­half of Petrotrin em­ploy­ees.

So far, the OW­TU is play­ing the ne­go­ti­a­tions process by the book and the Gov­ern­ment, as well as a va­ri­ety of pri­vate sec­tor um­brel­la or­gan­i­sa­tions, are plead­ing with the union not to go through with the strike ac­tion. All of this must be un­der­stood in the deep­er con­text of how we have ar­rived at this junc­ture in a broad­er philo­soph­i­cal sense.

In an ad­dress to a spe­cial con­ven­tion of the PNM in No­vem­ber 1970 at which time the "Ch­aguara­mas De­c­la­ra­tion: Per­spec­tives for the New So­ci­ety" re­placed the "Peo­ple's Char­ter" as the guid­ing philo­soph­i­cal doc­u­ment of the PNM, Dr Er­ic Williams had this to say in his ad­dress to the con­ven­tion:

"The PNM Per­spec­tives re­ject both lib­er­al cap­i­tal­ism (with its con­comi­tant of pen­e­tra­tion and take-over of the econ­o­my by mul­ti-na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions) and the com­mu­nist or­ga­ni­za­tion of the econ­o­my and the so­ci­ety. In­stead, we fol­low the pat­tern that is be­ing in­creas­ing­ly de­vel­oped in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries of state par­tic­i­pa­tion in the econ­o­my, to the ex­tent of up to 51 per cent in par­tic­u­lar en­ter­pris­es, to en­sure that de­ci­sion-mak­ing re­mains in lo­cal hands."

That was the philo­soph­i­cal par­a­digm that Williams and the PNM adopt­ed in 1970 in the af­ter­math of the Black Pow­er up­ris­ing ear­li­er that year. In­deed, that has been the philo­soph­i­cal guide­line that has been adopt­ed by suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments and has led to boom-and-bust cy­cles in our eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment as a coun­try.

That mod­el brought great pros­per­i­ty in the 1970s and ear­ly 1980s and then col­lapsed by the mid-1980s and the neo-con­ser­v­a­tive phi­los­o­phy of IMF struc­tur­al ad­just­ment poli­cies saved the coun­try from eco­nom­ic per­il by the ear­ly 1990s.

There was a re­sump­tion of that mod­el in the first decade of this mil­len­ni­um with new state en­ter­pris­es be­ing added once more to the pay­roll of the State as the oil-gas boom took place. Once again, ris­ing ex­pec­ta­tions were fu­elled by ris­ing rev­enues as well.

For the sec­ond time in our eco­nom­ic his­to­ry, the coun­try is fac­ing eco­nom­ic per­il be­cause of de­clin­ing oil and gas rev­enues and the in­abil­i­ty of the State to meet its com­mit­ments to its em­ploy­ees. Are we on the doorstep of an­oth­er neo-con­ser­v­a­tive struc­tur­al ad­just­ment pro­gramme to save the coun­try again?

The re­al­i­ty is that the trade unions in this coun­try have held firm to the Williams mod­el and have up­held its ide­o­log­i­cal in­tent. The pri­vate sec­tor-led um­brel­la or­gan­i­sa­tions seem to have gone along with it and have not adopt­ed an ide­o­log­i­cal po­si­tion more close­ly aligned with cap­i­tal­ism and the free mar­ket. In many re­spects, they have been ide­o­log­i­cal­ly neu­tral seem­ing­ly al­most afraid to ar­tic­u­late a more pro­found so­lu­tion to the prob­lem at hand.

The prob­lem at hand is whether the Williams mod­el of 1970 is still rel­e­vant to­day or is there the need for a change more than 46 years af­ter it was ad­vanced as a re­form of the first plan of 1956.

The trade unions have held firm­ly to the Williams mod­el and to its core val­ues. The pri­vate sec­tor has failed to clear­ly ar­tic­u­late a free mar­ket ap­proach and an em­brace of pri­va­ti­za­tion as their ide­o­log­i­cal po­si­tion. In­stead, they have be­come re­ac­tionary by call­ing the unions reck­less and ir­re­spon­si­ble.

The Gov­ern­ment is un­able to up­hold the val­ues of the Ch­aguara­mas De­c­la­ra­tion by try­ing to say that they are not hos­tile to the union, on the one hand, and yet they are ready to take ac­tion to break the ef­fect of the strike, on the oth­er.

The rea­son why the OW­TU is as strong as it is on this is­sue is be­cause of their firm ide­o­log­i­cal be­lief and com­mit­ment to their cause, while the pri­vate sec­tor is bereft of any philo­soph­i­cal con­vic­tion on the free mar­ket and pri­va­ti­za­tion as the op­pos­ing ar­gu­ment. The Gov­ern­ment is the mid­dle-man here seek­ing to re­act to the sit­u­a­tion, while be­ing re­luc­tant to dis­man­tle the Williams mod­el.

If it con­tin­ues this way, the en­try of neo-con­ser­v­a­tive struc­tur­al ad­just­ment poli­cies ad­min­is­tered by the IMF will be both the out­come of the cri­sis and al­so the sav­iour of the coun­try once again at great pain.

Williams' pur­suit of state cap­i­tal­ism can­not work if the State is un­able to gen­er­ate enough rev­enue to keep the mod­el go­ing. The pri­vate sec­tor is afraid of its own shad­ow on cap­i­tal­ism and the free mar­ket, the unions know ex­act­ly what they are do­ing and the Gov­ern­ment, which has been in di­a­logue with the IMF, is caught be­tween the dev­il and the deep blue sea.

If the pri­vate sec­tor could of­fer an ide­o­log­i­cal al­ter­na­tive so­lu­tion, the coun­try might ac­tu­al­ly have some­thing sub­stan­tial to de­bate. Fail­ure to do so leaves them cry­ing wolf about reck­less­ness and ir­re­spon­si­bil­i­ty when a new par­a­digm is need­ed.