Shir­van Williams

It is very im­por­tant to the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment that there is "sus­tain­able work, in con­di­tions which are safe, dig­ni­fied and pro­duc­tive." This was the view ex­pressed by Min­is­ter of Labour and Small and Mi­cro En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Er­rol McLeod. He was speak­ing at the launch of the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­gan­i­sa­tion's (ILO) third Caribbean Course on In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Stan­dards for judges, lawyers and le­gal ed­u­ca­tors at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day. Mag­is­trates, in­dus­tri­al court judges and le­gal ed­u­ca­tors from 13 Caribbean coun­tries are ex­pect­ed to par­tic­i­pate in the week-long sem­i­nar which be­gan yes­ter­day.

Sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions, name­ly ILO's In­ter­na­tion­al Train­ing Cen­tre, In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Stan­dards Move­ment and the ILO De­cent Work Team and Of­fice for the Caribbean have come to­geth­er to host the sem­i­nar. McLeod said the "le­gal pro­fes­sion acts as the van­guard of the cit­i­zen­ry." He said those who held le­gal pro­fes­sions were very im­por­tant to the over­all suc­cess of the coun­try. "Where the Gov­ern­ment and the le­gal pro­fes­sion per­form their roles op­ti­mal­ly, greater so­cial har­mo­ny and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment are as­sured," he said. This is why law and labour must work to­geth­er, he added. "Law is not a sub­set of labour, nei­ther is labour a sub­set of law, rather the two con­structs com­ple­ment each oth­er as part­ners in cham­pi­oning the ba­sic hu­man rights of eq­ui­ty and fair­ness," he said.

McLeod said this was es­pe­cial­ly true in a time when both work­ers and em­ploy­ers have be­come more en­light­ened about their rights. "In an era where work­ers and em­ploy­ers are be­com­ing vast­ly knowl­edge­able about their rights and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, your task of en­sur­ing com­pli­ance with in­ter­na­tion­al labour stan­dards, as set by the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­gan­i­sa­tion, is un­de­ni­ably a most oner­ous one," he said. Even though many coun­tries through­out the re­gion have signed sev­er­al ILO con­ven­tions and stan­dards it is not as easy to have them im­ple­ment­ed. How­ev­er, they def­i­nite­ly need­ed to be, he al­so said. "Yet, an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the im­pli­ca­tions of these stan­dards, in an era of rapid glob­al­i­sa­tion is of ut­most im­por­tance in pro­tect­ing our own vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties as a re­gion and har­mon­is­ing our labour as­pi­ra­tions, es­pe­cial­ly as the Caribbean at­tempts to be­come more com­pet­i­tive on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage," he said.