It is not of­ten that trade union lead­ers fo­cus on the oth­er side of the in­dus­tri­al con­tract-that is, the re­quire­ment for em­ploy­ees to re­turn val­ue to their em­ploy­er as a means of as­sist­ing their em­ploy­er's op­er­a­tions to re­tain com­pet­i­tive­ness and prof­itabil­i­ty. But pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers Union, James Lam­bert, did ex­act­ly that ear­li­er this week when he told 180 young se­mi-skilled em­ploy­ees of the Hous­ing De­vel­op- ment Cor­po­ra­tion that they had to give of their best on the job. It is ac­cept­ed that trade-union lead­ers are con­cerned with re­mu­ner­a­tion pack­ages and oth­er ben­e­fits for their mem­bers. That is part of their job. But over the last few years Cen­tral Bank da­ta has shown a de­cline in the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty ra­tios of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the con­se­quent neg­a­tive im­pact on the abil­i­ty of lo­cal pro­duc­ers to sell their goods and ser­vices abroad-in com­pe­ti­tion against labour forces which take se­ri­ous­ly the re­quire­ment for a pos­i­tive work eth­ic.

Mr Lam­bert, who was re­cent­ly made a gov­ern­ment sen­a­tor, not­ed to the young peo­ple about to en­ter the work­place that the econ­o­my of the coun­try is de­pen­dent on pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and that they should not on­ly think in terms of mon­ey and not work. The vet­er­an trade-union leader is­sued a blunt and hon­est warn­ing. "We can­not con­tin­ue in Trinidad and To­ba­go to work one hour for eight hours' pay. It will not work," he said.

What the NUGFW pres­i­dent gen­er­al was say­ing to the young em­ploy­ees is that un­pro­duc­tive work habits will even­tu­al­ly bring the or­gan­i­sa­tion which they and their fam­i­lies de­pend on for a liveli­hood to an un­pro­duc­tive halt. That must be good ad­vice in a world econ­o­my that has been in deep eco­nom­ic tur­moil and de­cline since 2008. More­over, Mr Lam­bert's com­ments must al­so be tak­en against the back­ground of the re­al dif­fi­cul­ties of the lo­cal econ­o­my. There has been no bet­ter il­lus­tra­tion of such dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances for T&T than the warn­ing of the Fi­nance Min­is­ter ear­li­er this week that in ad­di­tion to the last four years of deficit bud­get­ing, the re­al­i­ty fac­ing this coun­try is for an­oth­er five years of gov­ern­ment bor­row­ing and cut­ting back on ex­pen­di­ture to min­imise the in­evitable bud­get deficits.

Along with the urg­ings and warn­ings giv­en by Mr Lam­bert to work­ers, man­agers in the pub­lic sec­tor must al­so take a cue from what he has said. High­er lev­els of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty are not on­ly a func­tion of work­ers be­ing com­mit­ted to their jobs and to work­ing for the eight hours they are paid for, but al­so the need for sys­tems and hu­man man­age­ment of work process­es to en­sure the job gets done ef­fi­cient­ly. It may be that the Gov­ern­ment of the day needs to re­in­sti­tute a pro­duc­tiv­i­ty unit as part of the on­go­ing cam­paign to re­form the pub­lic ser­vice. Such a unit would sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly set out to de­vel­op the in­sti­tu­tion­al ca­pac­i­ty to pro­vide the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors with the ca­pac­i­ty to be­come com­pet­i­tive. It is well known that in­ef­fi­cient gov­ern­ment bu­reau­cra­cy is one of the great­est hin­drances to the pri­vate sec­tor. For in­stance, man­u­fac­tur­ers have long com­plained about de­lays in VAT re­bates and the mil­lion and one hur­dles to be crossed to gain ap­provals. Mr Lam­bert's urg­ings, then, ap­ply to all the in­di­vid­u­als and en­ti­ties in­volved in the process of pro­duc­tion-and are an ap­po­site and time­ly re­minder of the re­al­i­ty of the world of work to­day.