Raphael John-Lall

For­mer chief labour of­fi­cer at the Min­istry of Labour and now in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions con­sul­tant, Sabi­na Gomez, is as­sur­ing both em­ploy­ers and trade unions that the use of Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence (AI) in the world of busi­ness and in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions is a re­al­i­ty and will trans­form the old way of do­ing busi­ness.

“I think AI if used in the right way, it could be used as a tool to en­hance in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions and as­sist in help­ing to ed­u­cate work­ers and em­ploy­ers about their rights and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. At the same time, the use of ro­bot­ics should not be used to get rid of hu­man em­ploy­ees all to­geth­er as you need the hu­man touch in the work­place. Al­so, there would be a neg­a­tive im­pact on the job mar­ket when many of the tra­di­tion­al jobs be­come ob­so­lete as ro­bot­ics take over,” Gomez told the Busi­ness Guardian.

She said even in col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing when busi­ness own­ers and the com­pa­ny man­age­ment ne­go­ti­ate with unions, is­sues such as AI and the im­pact on the work­force should be on the ta­ble for dis­cus­sion.

“On a side note, there is val­ue in face-to-face ne­go­ti­a­tions es­pe­cial­ly in col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing. Prac­ti­tion­ers have be­come so ac­cus­tomed to meet­ing over plat­forms such as Zoom and Teams that the val­ue of a hand­shake and small talk is slow­ly di­min­ish­ing. Al­so, is­sues of re-skilling and re-tool­ing the work­force so that they can ac­quire skillsets that are rel­e­vant for the fu­ture. Prof­itabil­i­ty, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and com­pet­i­tive­ness are crit­i­cal for busi­ness vi­a­bil­i­ty.”

The In­ter­na­tion­al Train­ing Cen­ter of the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­ga­ni­za­tion (ITC/ILO) based in Turin, Italy re­cent­ly de­vel­oped a new AI-dri­ven chat­bot to help em­ploy­ers and oth­er stake­hold­ers with com­plex hu­man re­source man­age­ment and in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions ques­tions.

Gomez, who was trained at the or­gan­i­sa­tion, said the ILO sets in­ter­na­tion­al labour stan­dards that gov­ern or guide the em­ploy­er and em­ploy­ee re­la­tion­ship glob­al­ly.

She said there are al­so rec­om­men­da­tions and con­ven­tions and some­times gov­ern­ments rat­i­fy a con­ven­tion and this be­comes law. The IT­CI­LO car­ries out train­ing glob­al­ly for gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, both em­ploy­er and em­ploy­ee or­gan­i­sa­tions and NGO’S.

Ac­cord­ing to its web­site, on April 15, 2025, the ITC/ILO ad­ver­tised a live demon­stra­tion in the Philip­pines: a smart, hu­man-friend­ly AI chat­bot, co-cre­at­ed by the ITC/ILO and the Em­ploy­ers Con­fed­er­a­tion of the Philip­pines (ECOP) — one of the con­stituents rep­re­sent­ing em­ploy­ers. The web­site added that this chat­bot is not just a dig­i­tal tool, but a new way to sup­port em­ploy­ers with time­ly, ac­cu­rate, and ac­ces­si­ble knowl­edge about labour and so­cial pol­i­cy in the Philip­pines.

Ac­cord­ing to the ITC/ILO pro­mo­tion­al video, the user asks the chat­bot a ques­tion about work­ing on a hol­i­day and the chat­bot replies in sec­onds giv­ing da­ta that in the Philip­pines, over­time pay on a hol­i­day is com­put­ed by adding an ad­di­tion­al 30 per cent to the em­ploy­ees’ reg­u­lar hol­i­day rate of 200 per cent.

In the Philip­pines, busi­ness own­ers and em­ploy­ers were ask­ing for a sys­tem where they did not have to go through old fash­ioned files or to wait days or weeks on a helpdesk. The new chat­bot takes com­plex da­ta re­lat­ed to salaries, over­time pay, work­ing hours and oth­er in­for­ma­tion that busi­ness, em­ploy­ers and trade unions need and it sim­pli­fies it for the user.

Gomez is hop­ing that the T&T’s Min­istry of Labour could use a sim­i­lar tech­no­log­i­cal ap­proach in the fu­ture.

“I think it is a very good ini­tia­tive on the part of the ILO. With the ad­vent of AI, it be­comes a fix­ture in terms of ad­dress­ing top­i­cal is­sues that work­ers, em­ploy­ers and that the 45 or 46 trade unions in T&T, may have. New HR man­agers in the pri­vate sec­tor may have is­sues con­cern­ing ma­ter­ni­ty, over­time, cal­cu­la­tion of sev­er­ance and need on-the-spot ad­vice and this gives in­for­ma­tion in an easy, sim­ple man­ner. I could see the Min­istry of Labour us­ing this type of tech­nol­o­gy to keep the dif­fer­ent stake­hold­ers in hu­man re­source man­age­ment and in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions in­formed.

“On the Min­istry’s web­site there is the ‘Fre­quent­ly Asked’ ques­tion sec­tion but this AI-dri­ven tool will take it to the next lev­el. They came up with the idea of a chat­bot so each coun­try could have their own ver­sion of it as each coun­try has their own labour laws.”

She said some of the in­for­ma­tion a lo­cal ver­sion could pro­vide in­cludes how to file a trade dis­pute, how to cal­cu­late over­time, what is the min­i­mum wage and oth­er em­ploy­ee-re­lat­ed ques­tions.

“So, you as the busi­ness own­er or em­ploy­ee could log on wher­ev­er you are and ask how does the user do this or that. She is go­ing on ma­ter­ni­ty leave and how much leave is she en­ti­tled to? You may think that every em­ploy­ee ought to know this but there are many per­sons who do not have this ba­sic in­for­ma­tion and take to so­cial me­dia or Tik­Tok as their main source. This AI-dri­ven mod­el will add an­oth­er lev­el of sup­port to the stake­hold­ers. A lo­cal chat­bot should be tai­lored to the type of is­sues we have in T&T.”

For­eign in­vestors

Gomez al­so said that for­eign in­vestors and multi­na­tion­als who are in­ter­est­ed in in­vest­ing in T&T and need in­for­ma­tion on T&T’s labour laws would al­so be able to ac­cess this type of in­for­ma­tion in an easy for­mat.

With greater ef­fi­cien­cy, this would boost for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment (FDI), she added.

“Com­pa­nies look­ing to in­vest in T&T would want to know what the in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions cli­mate is like. They could eas­i­ly go and get this in­for­ma­tion on wages in T&T. Right now, there is a Labour Mar­ket In­for­ma­tion Unit at the Min­istry of Labour. It is not just about is­sues like the min­i­mum wage and over­time, but al­so if a com­pa­ny wants to in­vest in T&T and get cer­tain da­ta that should be pub­lished or out there, they can go on the Chat­bot and that da­ta should be read­i­ly avail­able.”

She al­so point­ed out that T&T’s labour leg­is­la­tion is out­dat­ed and when the leg­is­la­tion is up­dat­ed, this type of AI-dri­ven tech­nol­o­gy would be use­ful in keep­ing stake­hold­ers in­formed.

She re­ferred to the Truck Act, which is pri­mar­i­ly de­signed to pro­hib­it the pay­ment of wages to work­ers in any form oth­er than cash.

“We have some very old pieces of leg­is­la­tion like the Truck Act which is still be­ing used and it was up­dat­ed by the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Ad­vi­so­ry com­mit­tee (IRAC) so I am hop­ing that that re­al­ly goes through. We are talk­ing about the use of tech­nol­o­gy and how far tech­nol­o­gy has come and how it will im­pact col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing. When you have ro­bot­ics re­plac­ing hu­mans, an em­ploy­er does not need a sec­re­tary. If that em­ploy­er has an AI as­sis­tant that records the meet­ings, give up­dates and ac­tion items, there would no longer be a need for ad­min­is­tra­tive as­sis­tants. It is ob­vi­ous some jobs will be ob­so­lete.”

She al­so de­scribed mod­ern trade unions as “busi­ness­es” that op­er­ate on the same phi­los­o­phy as any oth­er rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing busi­ness.

“A busi­ness needs mon­ey to be op­er­at­ed, they have staff to pay. I am sure ro­bot­ics and AI will change many things in the sec­tor. Some or­gan­i­sa­tions now have fa­cial recog­ni­tion so when you come in you no longer have to sign in a reg­is­ter. Al­so, this goes straight to cal­cu­late em­ploy­ees’ pay. All of these things are now part of the lo­cal work-life land­scape of busi­ness­es glob­al­ly and in T&T. We ought to be hav­ing the con­ver­sa­tion about how to re­tool and reskill our peo­ple.”