Raphael John-Lall
While several prominent companies in the private sector have published profitable balance sheets over the last financial year, this has not been reflected in the wages that employees and workers in T&T earn.
Industrial relations practitioners, including Cipriani College of Labour and Co-operative Studies lecturer, Trevor Johnson and general secretary of the Joint Trade Union Movement (JTUM), Ozzi Warwick, shared these views during a webinar during the Cipriani College of Labour and Co-operative Studies' Labour Week of activities.
Johnson, who was moderator of the webinar, referred to companies that have reported healthy financial statement results and asked when will employees and workers of these companies share and enjoy benefits from corporate profits.
Although Johnson did not call any company’s name, it is public information that Prestige Holdings Ltd reported profit after tax of $23.26 million for the six-month period ended May 31, 2024, an increase of 16 per cent compared to the prior year.
“Another company earlier this year raised the price of one of its products, it just declared an increase of profit over the last financial reporting period of 16 percent. When we talk about fundamental rights and principles at work, does that include fairness and equity with respect to wages and salaries? I know that the economists will argue that profits do not pay wages, but when a company can declare $2.3 billion in T&T that can wipe out part of the deficit, then I find it interesting,” Johnson said.
Warwick, who also spoke, commented on these profitable companies and compared some private sector companies' profitable balance sheets to the new minimum wage and complained there is a huge disparity.
Clico reported an after-tax profit of $2.30 billion for the year ended December 31, 2023. That was 271 per cent more than the $621.4 million the company declared in its 2022 financial year.
“They say profits do not pay wages but it is wage labourers who create profits. A company to declare $2.3 billion in profits is the result that there were workers in that company who went to work every morning, from morning to evening. Can you imagine that we exist in a society where we are okay with a company declaring $2.3 billion but a large portion of our people in the same society, live on $3,500 a month. That is the new minimum wage and it is not a decent wage. Nobody can live a decent life with $3,500. Also, a lot of workers who are daily rated, they earn about $5,000 a month. In the same society where companies can declare hundreds of millions in profits.”
A significant percentage of Clico's after-tax profits came from its one-time gain of $1.99 billion from the sale of its 56.53 per cent shareholding in Methanol Holdings International Ltd on December 22, 2023. That means the sale of MHIL would have contributed 86.5 per cent of Clico's 2023 profits. The sale of Clico's shareholding in MHIL would have been approved by Corporation Sole, Minister of Finance, Colm Imbert.
Warwick also criticised the Employers Consultative Association (ECA) for saying that T&T is not ready for a living wage.
“What is that supposed to mean? Are you telling me that our people are not ready live a decent life? A living wage is wage that can enable people to live decently. Let me be clear. The International Labour Organization (ILO) supports a living wage. When the employer class is saying that the country is not ready for a living wage, what they are in fact saying is that T&T is not ready for economic development.”
Warwick called for there to be a new “social contract” among all stakeholders in society including business, labour and the Government where the wealth generated by the economic system.
“The current social contract is no longer adequate. While it served well to bring new enlightenment ideas like freedom, rights state obligation and so on, it also laid the bedrock for the emergence of capitalism and even provided for the emergence of trade unions. It also enabled states to balance the adverse outcomes of capitalism with a new post-World War II social settlement. I want to suggest that neo-liberalism has undermined that social settlement,” Warwick said.
He also called for the current labour laws to be modified in keeping with the rapid changes in the global and local economy.
“We must increase the influence of ordinary working people. Workers who make companies run regardless of the type of company. In the absence of workers choice and power, the Capitalist politicians will work solely in the interest of profit. So, workers’ power then becomes the only counter balance to the corporate power or the new term that is being bandied about in industrial relations which is ‘management prerogative.’ We require radical labour legislative agenda to change the labour governance system and have a rights base approach integrated into the system which will make it easier for workers to join a trade union…and expand the right to strike.”
Care Economy
Programme dean for Labour Studies at the Cipriani College of Labour and Co-operative Studies, Ian Daniel,who also spoke during the webinar, said building a "care economy" is important in supporting those within the formal economy but also for those operate within the informal economy.
To highlight the importance of the care economy, the World Economic Forum (WEF) in a white paper published in March called on leaders globally to prioritise the “care sector” and said it sheds light on the state of the care economy, emphasising its critical importance to economic growth and societal well-being.
The WEF’s white paper states that the “care economy” encompasses the paid and unpaid activities, labour and relationships that sustain human activity and this renders care fundamental to all economic and strategic decision-making, affecting over 8 billion people who receive and provide care at different points of their lives – and the economic, social and political opportunities they can access because of it.
Daniel said that a significant part of T&T’s society operates within the informal sector and they do not benefit from the country’s wealth.
“How many billions do you need in more money? How much more of that $2.3 billion can be more adequately shared among the people who make that money so that the society benefits as well.”
He also said that T&T’s policymakers have shown an “astounding lack of imagination” in developing new economic models, by not including people from the informal economy into the country’s system of social benefits like the National Insurance System.
“You go around the world and you see the social and solidarity economy. We are trapped in this concept of providing social security, the means to implement care for so many of our society members on the basis of the formal economy model where citizens get their emolument income, they get taxed and they pay into these insurance systems as if people who earned (informal) income… can’t do that too. They may not be able to do it in a structured way.”
