Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says heavy in­vest­ment in tech­no­log­i­cal de­vel­op­ments such as Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence or AI is not on­ly re-cal­i­brat­ing, but al­so re-in­vent­ing the world of work, which pos­es a chal­lenge for the en­tire so­ci­ety.

In his Mes­sage to the Na­tion in ob­ser­vance of Labour Day, the Prime Min­is­ter ac­knowl­edges that with AI, “there is po­ten­tial for great im­prove­ment along­side the pos­si­bil­i­ty of fright­en­ing abuse.”

“It is on­ly a mat­ter of time,” Dr Row­ley points out, “be­fore the present guardrails in the work­place are changed and gen­er­a­tive AI, with its enor­mous ca­pac­i­ty for da­ta, pat­tern recog­ni­tion, and au­toma­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ties, forces a new mix and style of work.”

The PM al­so re­it­er­at­ed Gov­ern­ment com­mit­ment to be­ing “a will­ing part­ner” with the Labour Move­ment and oth­er so­ci­etal stake­hold­ers for the “fur­ther de­vel­op­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The fol­low­ing is the full text of the Prime Min­is­ter’s mes­sage in ob­ser­vance of Labour Day 2024…

MES­SAGE TO THE NA­TION

FROM DR THE HO­N­OURABLE KEI­TH ROW­LEY

PRIME MIN­IS­TER OF THE RE­PUB­LIC OF TRINIDAD AND TO­BA­GO

ON THE OC­CA­SION OF LABOUR DAY 2024

To­day, the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go cel­e­brates Labour Day as a pub­lic hol­i­day in recog­ni­tion of the pa­tri­ots of 1937 and all those who labour in ser­vice of oth­ers. We salute those who con­tin­ued the strug­gle over the past decades, for the recog­ni­tion of labour; and those, at present, who con­tin­ue to as­sert the rights of work­ers.

It is this coun­try’s way of ac­knowl­edg­ing, specif­i­cal­ly, Tubal Uri­ah “Buzz” But­ler, and all the pa­tri­ots of that era in­clud­ing Adri­an Co­la Rien­zi, who stood side by side in the cru­cible against the colo­nial au­thor­i­ties. Labour pro­duced the house­hold names of George Weekes, Nathaniel Crichlow, Fran­cis Mungroo and El­ma Fran­cois.

Greet­ings to­day are from the Gov­ern­ment and peo­ple of our Re­pub­lic, my fam­i­ly and my­self as Prime Min­is­ter.

We must re­mem­ber that our coun­try ranks among the world's first oil pro­duc­ers. Our first suc­cess­ful oil well was drilled in 1866 in Aripero, in the then colony by Wal­ter Dar­went, and com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion be­gan here in 1908.

By the 1930s, Trinidad was es­tab­lished as an oil-pro­duc­ing colony, but the re­al ben­e­fits of our is­land’s re­sources were not felt among the labour­ing mass­es. Out­side the walls of the em­ploy­er class, work­ers were forced to sur­vive in poor health, on mea­gre wages, and in the squalor and pover­ty that was wide­spread.

The colony’s pro­duc­tion reached ten mil­lion bar­rels per year, along­side a re­fin­ing ca­pac­i­ty that al­lowed oil to be im­port­ed from Venezuela. Work­ers, how­ev­er, felt ex­clud­ed from those achieve­ments, and worse, suf­fered the on-the-job con­tempt of em­ploy­ers.

By the late 1930s work­ers were or­gan­is­ing them­selves in­to labour unions, cre­at­ing a new cli­mate of ne­go­ti­a­tions in in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions, which was for­malised in the 1960s with the es­tab­lish­ment of an In­dus­tri­al Court, as the ar­biter.

The labour move­ment, how­ev­er, faces some ma­jor chal­lenges to­day, not on­ly in this coun­try but world­wide.

Many in­dus­tries across the globe are ei­ther be­ing re­struc­tured rad­i­cal­ly or closed per­ma­nent­ly, as work­ers are fac­ing com­pe­ti­tion from tech­no­log­i­cal mar­vels.

The world of work is not on­ly be­ing re-cal­i­brat­ed but re-in­vent­ed with a surge of cor­po­rate in­vest­ment by ma­jor big tech com­pa­nies, in­to gen­er­a­tive AI (ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence). These emerg­ing de­vel­op­ments will have tremen­dous so­cio-eco­nom­ic im­pli­ca­tions for our own work­place.

We have seen the psy­cho-so­cial im­pact AI has had on the jobs and lives of fac­to­ry work­ers. The im­pact is be­ing re­vealed grad­u­al­ly among “knowl­edge work­ers”—ac­coun­tants, lawyers, en­gi­neers, ar­chi­tects, bankers, teach­ers, etc.—whose jobs are not just be­ing re­for­mat­ted, but some made re­dun­dant.  The counter-ar­gu­ment is framed that AI is un­leash­ing new lev­els of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and greater ef­fi­cien­cies. Here there is po­ten­tial for great im­prove­ment along­side the pos­si­bil­i­ty of fright­en­ing abuse.

World­wide, it is be­ing con­clud­ed that no area in ei­ther the pub­lic or pri­vate sec­tors will re­main un­touched or im­mune to au­toma­tion with its speed, deft­ness and wide reach. It is on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore the present guardrails in the work­place are changed and gen­er­a­tive AI, with its enor­mous ca­pac­i­ty for da­ta, pat­tern recog­ni­tion, and au­toma­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ties, forces a new mix and style of work.

This will be a chal­lenge for every­one—the em­ploy­er, the em­ploy­ee, the labour move­ment, the gov­ern­ment—in­deed the en­tire so­ci­ety.

One pre­dic­tion is that it will be just an­oth­er fork in the road, and gen­er­a­tive AI should be un­der­stood as a com­ple­ment to hu­man in­ge­nu­ity, from which our so­ci­ety will ben­e­fit, over­all. At worst this could eas­i­ly be cold com­fort to the help­less.

The re­al chal­lenge for all stake­hold­ers—man­age­ment, gov­ern­ment, labour—is to con­front these and oth­er emerg­ing 21st-cen­tu­ry re­al­i­ties with co­op­er­a­tion, re­spect, wis­dom and un­der­stand­ing.

To­day, as we salute the Labour Move­ment and com­pli­ment its lead­ers, past and present, the Gov­ern­ment stands as a will­ing part­ner, recog­nis­ing that there are no ad­ver­saries, just dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives all in the mix for the fur­ther de­vel­op­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

In all of these ex­pres­sions over his­to­ry, the one thing that re­mains con­stant is change. Let us be ready, be open to learn­ing and not be tem­pera­men­tal in our ways.

Let us all cel­e­brate Labour Day 2024.