At a re­cent ex­change with Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark, Labour Min­is­ter Stephen Mc Clashie stat­ed that the Gov­ern­ment will not put for­ward any changes to the cur­rent In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions and Sev­er­ance Ben­e­fit Acts be­fore the elec­tion this year.

He ar­gued that there was no time left to work on the de­tails of po­ten­tial amend­ments and then ‘rush them through be­fore we have an elec­tion’ (due by the mid­dle of the year). It might be ar­gued that a de­lay of just a few more months isn’t a bad deal, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the sen­si­tive na­ture of any ma­jor changes that might be pro­posed to these key labour laws.

The prob­lem is not that. The prob­lem is that the cur­rent PNM Gov­ern­ment (just like the pre­vi­ous UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion) has done lit­tle or noth­ing to up­date our cur­rent labour laws, fur­ther lim­it­ing T&T’s op­por­tu­ni­ties to be com­pet­i­tive in a chang­ing world.

In 2015, the UNC hur­ried­ly in­tro­duced a bill with some piece­meal changes to the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act short­ly be­fore the gen­er­al elec­tion.

But the pro­posed amend­ments did not deal with any of the fun­da­men­tal short­com­ings of the cur­rent frame­work and were pri­mar­i­ly aimed at en­trench­ing the pow­er of trade unions at a time when union lead­ers were ac­tive­ly cam­paign­ing against the then gov­ern­ment.

The pro­posed bill lapsed and was not rein­tro­duced. The in­com­ing PNM gov­ern­ment sub­se­quent­ly set up the Na­tion­al Tri­par­tite Ad­vi­so­ry Coun­cil to try to ham­mer out an agree­ment be­tween labour, busi­ness and gov­ern­ment on over­all fun­da­men­tal re­forms to the IR frame­work. Af­ter some re­ports of ini­tial suc­cess, this ef­fort col­lapsed, with union lead­ers pulling out of the process, cit­ing dis­re­spect from the gov­ern­ment (which, in turn, al­lowed the whole thing to come to a halt).

To put it sim­ply, our labour laws are just not fit for pur­pose any­more, in great part be­cause they are mis­aligned with to­day’s labour mar­ket and to­day’s eco­nom­ic land­scape. For in­stance, our laws don’t prop­er­ly recog­nise the dif­fer­ent ways many want to be em­ployed, in­clud­ing flex­i­ble work­ing, some­thing that makes our coun­try less at­trac­tive to dig­i­tal work­ers and makes the job mar­ket less in­clu­sive, par­tic­u­lar­ly pe­nal­is­ing women who of­ten must jug­gle their pro­fes­sion­al ca­reers with fam­i­ly de­mands.

And then we have re­al aber­ra­tions from a civ­il lib­er­ty point of view, like the need to be unionised to have ac­cess to the In­dus­tri­al Court (with a few ex­cep­tions) and the lack of free­dom not to be part of a bar­gain­ing unit where there is a recog­nised trade union.

It doesn’t take a ge­nius to work out that our labour laws will be­come even less rel­e­vant as the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion takes hold, with key ma­jor de­vel­op­ments, like ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, up­end­ing the way we work and the way the econ­o­my op­er­ates. We are be­hind al­ready with most laws when it comes to glob­alised sup­ply chains, dis­rup­tive tech­nolo­gies, and how the world works.

New de­vel­op­ments will set us back even fur­ther. This trend to kick com­plex is­sues down the po­lit­i­cal road is noth­ing new—just days ago we heard that T&TEC’s pro­posed en­er­gy price ris­es are al­so un­like­ly to hap­pen this side of the elec­tion.

This not on­ly adds to the fi­nan­cial pres­sures on the elec­tric­i­ty dis­trib­u­tor (with a knock-on im­pact on if or how it pays its sup­pli­ers, es­pe­cial­ly oth­er state en­ter­pris­es) but al­so does some­thing that makes no fi­nan­cial sense, as fur­ther de­lays mean a de fac­to gen­er­ous en­er­gy sub­sidy ir­re­spec­tive of whether one is rich or poor.

The coun­try des­per­ate­ly needs key re­forms to achieve sus­tain­able growth in the years to come. These re­forms will be cru­cial for gen­er­at­ing more jobs, par­tic­u­lar­ly in emerg­ing sec­tors like tech­nol­o­gy and re­new­able en­er­gy, which have sig­nif­i­cant po­ten­tial for fu­ture ex­pan­sion.

For in­stance, de­spite a lot of talk, we are yet to see fun­da­men­tal changes to our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem to bring it in line with what fu­ture adults will need to sur­vive and thrive, and adult ‘on the job’ skills de­vel­op­ment for adults al­ready in em­ploy­ment is al­so crit­i­cal, as the work­place changes be­yond recog­ni­tion.

The re­al­i­ty is that, in prac­tice, not much will hap­pen from now un­til the elec­tion. Per­haps the on­ly hope we have is by hav­ing civ­il so­ci­ety hold­ing both main par­ties, the PNM and the UNC, to ac­count by de­mand­ing what specif­i­cal­ly they have in mind when it comes to such crit­i­cal re­forms like labour laws and the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.

It will al­so be es­sen­tial to know where both par­ties stand on mat­ters such as re­new­able en­er­gy, the dig­i­tal sec­tor, and the fu­ture size and na­ture of the pub­lic sec­tor. They must al­so be clear about how and when they are like­ly to de­vel­op, de­bate, and im­ple­ment these changes so that we are all clear about their plans and can hold them to their pledges. And we must en­sure they do not fall in­to the pop­ulist temp­ta­tion of of­fer­ing sim­ple an­swers to com­plex is­sues such as T&T’s eco­nom­ic fu­ture.

Let us be clear on this: the kind of trans­for­ma­tion need­ed won’t be easy or pain-free if we are se­ri­ous about it.

Hope­ful­ly, though, most see the need for ma­jor changes to T&T, as it is clear that, as things stand, we will just plod along with­out the trans­for­ma­tive changes the coun­try needs and de­serves.

More to the point: these changes are crit­i­cal for gen­er­a­tions to come, and we have a du­ty to meet the needs of our chil­dren and grand­chil­dren, es­pe­cial­ly as we grad­u­al­ly head to­wards the ex­haus­tion of the oil and gas re­serves that have kept us go­ing for the past cen­tu­ry or so.

Many op­por­tu­ni­ties have been missed al­ready, but a fail­ure to ur­gent­ly de­vel­op deep and mean­ing­ful re­forms, such as the ones need­ed re­gard­ing the work­force, will on­ly mean more years, if not decades, of po­lit­i­cal pro­cras­ti­na­tion with­out any of the ma­jor is­sues be­ing prop­er­ly dealt with. And, as we all know very well, you must take in front be­fore in front take yuh. And, if it does take us, the con­se­quences can be cat­a­stroph­ic to the na­tion’s fu­ture.