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Monday, July 21, 2025

Industrial Court president: Labour law reforms must include AI, remote work

by

Raphael John-Lall
22 days ago
20250630

Pres­i­dent of the In­dus­tri­al Court Heather Seale be­lieves that changes in T&T’s labour laws must re­flect the changes in the econ­o­my and oth­er so­cial and tech­no­log­i­cal trends.

Speak­ing at a sem­i­nar en­ti­tled “Be­yond Bar­gain­ing: Build­ing Sus­tain­able Work­places in T&T” at the Arthur Lok Jack School of Busi­ness, Mt Hope on June 18, Seale said some of the re­cent trends in labour law re­form in oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions in­di­cate a greater fo­cus on in­clu­siv­i­ty, non-dis­crim­i­na­tion and di­ver­si­ty in the work­place.

“Both leg­isla­tive re­forms as well as ju­di­cial in­ter­pre­ta­tions have sought to for­ti­fy the rights of mar­gin­alised groups, en­com­pass­ing gen­der, race, sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion and dis­abil­i­ty. Tele­work­ing or re­mote work and the gig econ­o­my are changes in how work is per­formed that have prompt­ed leg­isla­tive change in oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions. They are ar­eas that we may wish to con­sid­er and pro­vide for in any leg­isla­tive re­form of our labour laws,” Seale said.

She added that mod­ern labour laws and poli­cies must ad­dress the chal­lenges of en­sur­ing a safe work en­vi­ron­ment for re­mote work­ers, en­com­pass­ing er­gonom­ic con­sid­er­a­tions, men­tal health and the right to dis­con­nect.

“Re­mote work re­quires spe­cial at­ten­tion to en­sure that the oblig­a­tions of par­ties are clear.

“For ex­am­ple, how do we de­fine a work­place? When is a work­er on ac­tive du­ty? What is a work­place ac­ci­dent? Whose oblig­a­tion is it to pro­vide a safe place of work, when the work is be­ing per­formed at the work­er’s home? These may sound as trite and sim­ple ques­tions but sim­i­lar ques­tions have en­gaged the minds of judges in oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions. I would sug­gest that in the ab­sence of leg­is­la­tion, these and sim­i­lar ques­tions should be in the con­tem­pla­tion of em­ploy­ers, unions and em­ploy­ees when set­tling Man­age­ment Poli­cies or when ne­go­ti­at­ing col­lec­tive agree­ments. This ap­proach may well min­imise dis­putes in these ar­eas and would go some way in fill­ing the gap un­til our labour laws are up­dat­ed.”

She said gig work­ers, whom so­ci­ety would re­fer to gen­er­al­ly as in­de­pen­dent con­trac­tors, face hur­dles in or­gan­is­ing and bar­gain­ing col­lec­tive­ly.

“Some ju­ris­dic­tions are ex­plor­ing in­no­v­a­tive so­lu­tions, such as sec­toral bar­gain­ing or plat­form co­op­er­a­tives, to ad­dress the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing rights of gig work­ers. Our ap­proach has been to ex­clude such work­ers from the de­f­i­n­i­tion of ‘work­er’ un­der the IRA, but this has been used in the past by some em­ploy­ers to sur­rep­ti­tious­ly avoid their oblig­a­tions to per­sons who are re­al­ly work­ers but whom may un­wit­ting­ly agree to sign a con­tract for ser­vice. “

She al­so re­ferred to Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence (AI) and said or­gan­i­sa­tions are in­creas­ing­ly adopt­ing AI and au­toma­tion tech­nolo­gies.

“These tech­nolo­gies have sub­stan­tial im­pli­ca­tions for the work­force and may be even more se­vere in economies such as ours. While AI sys­tems can analyse vast amounts of da­ta to stream­line de­ci­sion-mak­ing process­es, au­to­mate rou­tine tasks, and en­hance over­all pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, these ad­vance­ments may prove cost­ly in terms of job dis­place­ment. AI al­so rais­es a num­ber of eth­i­cal and sim­i­lar con­sid­er­a­tions, such as po­ten­tial bi­as­es in al­go­rith­mic de­ci­sion-mak­ing, and pri­va­cy con­cerns.”

She added that AI seems cer­tain to be a part of the fu­ture of the world of work and in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions in T&T.

“Un­til our laws pro­vide specif­i­cal­ly for the use of AI, em­ploy­ers and unions would be well ad­vised to have poli­cies and col­lec­tive agree­ments which gov­ern its use at work.”

Seale said strik­ing a bal­ance be­tween en­sur­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and re­spect­ing em­ploy­ees’ right to pri­va­cy be­comes a key chal­lenge for mod­ern labour law.

“The use of bio­met­ric da­ta, such as fin­ger­prints or fa­cial recog­ni­tion, and wear­able tech­nol­o­gy in the work­place is be­com­ing more preva­lent. Use of bio­met­rics for ac­cess con­trol, at­ten­dance track­ing, or mon­i­tor­ing em­ploy­ee health. The col­lec­tion and stor­age of such bio­met­ric da­ta raise pri­va­cy is­sues, as this da­ta is of­ten sen­si­tive and re­quires ro­bust pro­tec­tions to pre­vent mis­use. Our labour laws must con­front all of these is­sues to en­sure work­ers’ rights are pro­tect­ed while at the same time not ty­ing the hands of em­ploy­ers in their quest to in­crease pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and be­come more com­pet­i­tive.”

She be­lieves that glob­al­i­sa­tion which has fa­cil­i­tat­ed the move­ment of labour across bor­ders, brings with it cross-bor­der em­ploy­ment arrange­ments, which pose their own pe­cu­liar chal­lenge in the form of com­plex cross bor­der em­ploy­ment dy­nam­ics.

“These arrange­ments may lead to di­verse work­forces, which in­volve re­mote work across bor­ders, chal­leng­ing tra­di­tion­al no­tions of em­ploy­ment, and rais­ing ju­ris­dic­tion­al is­sues and can re­sult in a lack of pro­tec­tion for work­ers. The an­swer may lie in cross-bor­der lit­i­ga­tion.”

In con­clu­sion, Seale said that the fu­ture of T&T’s in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions cli­mate, re­quires a con­cert­ed and hon­est ef­fort by all stake­hold­ers to con­front the present re­al­i­ty, tack­le the ar­eas of short­com­ing in the laws, work­place poli­cies and col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing, that have not ad­e­quate­ly kept pace with is­sues aris­ing out of the use of tech­no­log­i­cal changes and cli­mate changes etc.

“Com­mit­ment to a tri­par­tite ap­proach should not de­pend on per­son­al­i­ties but on prin­ci­ples be­cause we all are re­al­ly in this to­geth­er. We can learn from the ex­pe­ri­ences of oth­ers and draw up­on them in re­form­ing our own laws and poli­cies and tai­lor­ing them to suit our spe­cif­ic cir­cum­stances.”

Labour law re­form

Seale re­ferred to the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­gan­i­sa­tion (ILO) which in a Sub­re­gion­al Labour Law Train­ing Work­shop in 2023 ad­dressed the rea­sons for labour law re­form and what they rec­om­mend as the best ap­proach.

Some of the rea­sons they posit­ed for labour law re­form which she agrees with, in­clude:

a) Labour laws may be fail­ing to achieve their ob­jec­tives be­cause they do not “fit” well with labour mar­ket con­di­tions. This may be be­cause they were in­her­it­ed or bor­rowed;

b) To ad­dress con­cerns/prob­lems that have emerged in the labour mar­ket be­cause of changes to em­ploy­ment prac­tices (e.g., growth in in­di­rect, tem­po­rary em­ploy­ment) and that need to be ad­dressed through law re­form;

c) To re­flect changes in so­ci­etal val­ues (e.g., dis­crim­i­na­tion at work, work/ fam­i­ly bal­ance);

d) To ad­dress de­fi­cien­cies in the law that have been high­light­ed by le­gal cas­es or prac­tices; and

e) To im­prove com­pli­ance with fun­da­men­tal and rat­i­fied ILO Con­ven­tions.

She al­so said the ILO in the same ses­sion in­di­cat­ed that in its ex­pe­ri­ence labour law re­forms that have been craft­ed through an ef­fec­tive process of tri­par­tite con­sul­ta­tion prove more sus­tain­able be­cause this ap­proach al­lows for con­sid­er­a­tion the com­plex set of in­ter­ests at play in the labour mar­ket. In ad­di­tion, they can en­sure a bal­ance be­tween the re­quire­ments of eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment and the so­cial needs.

Im­pact of glob­al­i­sa­tion

Labour spe­cial­ist and as­sis­tant gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) Trevor John­son, who al­so spoke dur­ing the sem­i­nar ,said in this era of em­ploy­ment re­la­tions, com­pa­nies and or­gan­i­sa­tions have to rec­on­cile a num­ber of fac­tors from an in­ex­haustible list of con­sid­er­a­tions which in­clude:

-Or­gan­i­sa­tions are en­cour­aged to think glob­al rather than lo­cal;

-Glob­al cor­po­ra­tions ap­pear to have vir­tu­al rather than lo­cal of­fices. HR di­rec­tion is of­ten res­i­dent in a glob­al of­fice;

-Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence, au­toma­tion, dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion and an in­creas­ing num­ber of tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vances are im­pact­ing the work­space not to men­tion con­sid­er­a­tions like re­mote work, plat­form work etc;

-Out­sourc­ing be­comes preva­lent, i.e. non-core ser­vices and jobs per­formed in third coun­tries. e.g. call cen­tres;

-Con­sid­er­a­tions for cli­mate change and the con­se­quent just tran­si­tions can­not be ig­nored;

-Em­ploy­ment is­sues etc. de­cid­ed else­where;

John­son said all of the above means that the na­ture of the work­place is evolv­ing but some fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples must be part of the plat­form up­on which to nav­i­gate the way for­ward.

He added that Gov­ern­ment, em­ploy­ers and trade unions will con­tin­ue to ex­ist in the fore­see­able fu­ture though each will en­gage in var­i­ous stages of evo­lu­tion to adapt to a chang­ing glob­al en­vi­ron­ment.

“Em­ploy­ers need to spend more time learn­ing how to en­gage trade unions rather than in­vest in union bust­ing tech­niques and le­gal pa­parazzi seek­ing to evade their oblig­a­tions to have work en­vi­ron­ments that pro­mote and are aligned with the ILO prin­ci­ples of de­cent work.”


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