JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Monday, July 28, 2025

We need to talk

by

Guardian Media Limited
120 days ago
20250330

Marvin Smith

In March 2021, the three labour um­brel­la groups joined forces to walk away from NTAC, the Na­tion­al Tri­par­tite Ad­vi­so­ry Coun­cil cre­at­ed to bring to­geth­er busi­ness, gov­ern­ment and trade unions to dis­cuss em­ploy­ment and in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions mat­ters.

They nev­er re­turned to the ta­ble.

The ef­fec­tive demise of NTAC due to the with­draw­al of one of the par­ties has been a ma­jor missed op­por­tu­ni­ty to pave the way to­wards im­proved in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions and em­ploy­ment growth in T&T.

Hope­ful­ly, who­ev­er wins the next gen­er­al elec­tion will seek to bring it back in some way or an­oth­er so that these op­por­tu­ni­ties aren’t lost for­ev­er.

The fact is that T&T des­per­ate­ly needs a se­ri­ous fo­rum–de­void of cheap pol­i­tics or even cheap­er pop­ulist grand­stand­ing–if it is to have the kind of labour laws and in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions cli­mate re­quired to en­sure there is growth and pros­per­i­ty for all.

Es­pe­cial­ly at times of glob­al un­cer­tain­ty trig­gered by con­flicts, glob­al geopo­lit­i­cal re­or­gan­i­sa­tion and, more re­cent­ly, a new wave of pro­tec­tion­ism kicked off by the world’s largest econ­o­my, it is es­sen­tial that we have an econ­o­my that is tru­ly dy­nam­ic so that we can al­so flex when the world around us flex­es (for bet­ter or for worse).

To make this work, we need labour laws that give more em­ploy­ment flex­i­bil­i­ty. As we saw dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, ours are so rigid that even the ur­gent need for peo­ple to work from home was po­ten­tial­ly hin­dered by the cur­rent, high­ly pre­scrip­tive leg­is­la­tion.

So much so that our pub­lic sec­tor is yet to have an agreed pol­i­cy on re­mote work­ing, even though the world is now mov­ing in the oth­er di­rec­tion, with many busi­ness­es in­struct­ing their staff to ful­ly re­turn to the of­fice. In essence, we need to find the right bal­ance be­tween a kind of ‘bill of rights’ for em­ploy­ees across the coun­try (rep­re­sent­ed by trade unions or not) to en­sure a more flex­i­ble work­force doesn’t equal a race to the bot­tom, with the kind of pro­tec­tions and guar­an­tees that any de­cent so­ci­ety ought to grant to its cit­i­zens.

But, at the same time, we need to en­sure that em­ploy­ers can adapt and ad­just as con­di­tions re­quire, re­spond­ing to so­ci­ety’s needs and en­sur­ing the op­er­a­tions re­main vi­able, thus al­so en­sur­ing longer-term em­ploy­ment for as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble.

This flex­i­bil­i­ty can be good for all sides, al­so help­ing those who want or need more flex­i­ble work­ing hours and con­di­tions, which in turn could help tack­le the wor­ry­ing trend to­wards peo­ple al­to­geth­er quit­ting the jobs mar­ket.

Al­though well-mean­ing, coun­tries where laws make staff move­ment dif­fi­cult tend to have high­er un­em­ploy­ment or a cul­ture of short-term con­tracts be­cause, once some­one is hired, it is very hard to shrink the work­force, even when the busi­ness is at risk.

Spain has some of these laws, which no doubt con­tributed to high lev­els of youth un­em­ploy­ment, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing re­ces­sions.

But Spain is al­so a great ex­am­ple of how di­a­logue be­tween par­ties can turn things around when it de­vel­oped a so­cial pact to help with its eco­nom­ic resur­gence as it emerged from the to­tal­i­tar­i­an Fran­co regime.nIt is clear some­thing must change. Di­a­logue will be key for that to hap­pen. Once the elec­tion is over, whichev­er par­ty is in pow­er ought to try and cre­ate a new fo­rum.

For it to work, the Gov­ern­ment of the day will need to clear­ly demon­strate a de­ter­mi­na­tion to im­ple­ment the deep­er changes our cur­rent labour laws so des­per­ate­ly need. And it must go be­yond the leg­is­la­tion it­self–we need to change the mind­set of our in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions to one that is more col­lab­o­ra­tive and less ad­ver­sar­i­al, whilst ac­knowl­edg­ing the par­ties won’t al­ways agree on every­thing.

With that, a new NTAC-like body must have clear­er and stronger terms of ref­er­ence, to­geth­er with well-un­der­stood de­liv­er­ables and time­lines, or it risks be­ing just an­oth­er talk­ing shop. As sug­gest­ed here be­fore, and giv­en the im­por­tance of the mat­ter, this new body should be chaired by the Prime Min­is­ter of the day, who­ev­er that per­son might be.

And such a body must al­so be more rep­re­sen­ta­tive. Yes, trade unions re­main an im­por­tant part of our in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions land­scape, and they are rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion. And, yes, they are al­so part of the coun­try’s po­lit­i­cal land­scape, even if, some­times, what they do may go against the law.

But no, they are not the on­ly ones who speak for em­ploy­ees or would-be em­ploy­ees. Quite the con­trary–the re­al­i­ty is that the labour move­ment does not di­rect­ly rep­re­sent a con­sid­er­able por­tion of the coun­try’s work­force (with a to­tal mem­ber­ship even small­er).

So, a fu­ture ad­vi­so­ry group deal­ing with em­ploy­ment mat­ters must seek to ex­pand the rep­re­sen­ta­tion from an em­ploy­ee’s per­spec­tive.

For in­stance, NGOs or sim­i­lar bod­ies that can speak with au­thor­i­ty about labour and em­ploy­ment mat­ters could be good ad­di­tions to the group.

The same can be ar­gued for em­ploy­ers–the main busi­ness cham­bers play a ma­jor role in rep­re­sent­ing busi­ness views and should be there, but they are as­so­ci­a­tions that may not en­com­pass every part of the econ­o­my.

And when it comes to the dig­i­tal world, it is es­sen­tial that the body has peo­ple who can un­der­stand the needs of this sec­tor and the op­por­tu­ni­ties it can bring to T&T, whilst al­so tap­ping in­to the per­spec­tives that en­tre­pre­neurs and start-up own­ers can bring to the ta­ble. None of this means the trade unions aren’t wel­come–they ought to be around the same ta­ble dis­cussing and (hope­ful­ly) agree­ing on em­ploy­ment mat­ters.

But it must al­so be made clear to them that fail­ure to turn up equals an ac­tive de­ci­sion to ab­stain from en­gag­ing with these much-need­ed re­forms that must go ahead, with or with­out them.

A new gov­ern­ment, with a fresh man­date, will have a fan­tas­tic op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­set the way we, first, get to­geth­er to find so­lu­tions and, then, im­ple­ment the kind of labour re­forms that will pos­i­tive­ly trans­form the econ­o­my for gen­er­a­tions to come.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored