Raphael John-Lall

raphael.lall@guardian.co.tt

Leader of the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) Wat­son Duke is con­tin­u­ing the 100-year tra­di­tion of trade union lead­ers who have moved in­to po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship in T&T.

Arthur An­drew Cipri­ani, Tubal Uri­ah “Buzz” But­ler, Bas­deo Pan­day and Er­rol McLeod are among the labour lead­ers who have crossed in­to pol­i­tics.

Duke, pres­i­dent of the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA), the lat­est to do so, re­cent­ly led the PDP to a re­sound­ing vic­to­ry in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) elec­tions on De­cem­ber 6 break­ing the PNM’s 20-year hold on pow­er in To­ba­go. He will step down as PSA pres­i­dent on De­cem­ber 31.

A cen­tu­ry of trade union pol­i­tics

T&T’s trade union­ists’ long his­to­ry of in­volve­ment in pol­i­tics dates back more than 100 years to Cipri­ani whose po­lit­i­cal ca­reer start­ed dur­ing World War 1 when he led a one-man cam­paign for a reg­i­ment of non-white West In­di­an sol­diers. In 1919, he be­came pres­i­dent of the Trinidad Work­ing­men’s As­so­ci­a­tion (TWA) which led to the for­ma­tion of the Trinidad Labour Par­ty (TLP).

Cipri­ani fought for the eight-hour work­day, le­gal­i­sa­tion of trade unions, uni­ver­sal suf­frage and equal rights for women and was elect­ed may­or of Port-of-Spain on eight sep­a­rate oc­ca­sions.

In 1936, But­ler formed the British Em­pire Work­ers and Cit­i­zens Home Rule Par­ty (BE­W­CHP) and had var­i­ous lev­els of suc­cess at the lo­cal gov­ern­ment lev­el. In 1961, he con­test­ed the gen­er­al elec­tions for the La Brea seat.

Bas­deo Pan­day en­tered pol­i­tics in 1966 when he be­came a mem­ber of the Work­ers and Farm­ers’ Par­ty. He was one of the founders of the Unit­ed Labour Front (ULF) and first en­tered Par­lia­ment in 1972 as an Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor. 

Pan­day found­ed the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) in 1988 and be­came Prime Min­is­ter in 1995.

More re­cent­ly, for­mer Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union leader (OW­TU) Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al Er­rol McLeod served as Labour Min­is­ter in the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment which took of­fice in 2010.

In 2015, Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus, a for­mer PSA pres­i­dent, be­came the PNM’s Labour Min­is­ter.

For­mer Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer of the OW­TU David Ab­du­lah is the po­lit­i­cal leader of the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) and the par­ty has been field­ing can­di­dates in gen­er­al and lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions.

Labour-pol­i­tics links

Sev­er­al labour lead­ers and in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions ex­perts have weighed in on Duke’s re­cent tri­umph and claims of a con­flict of in­ter­est.

Lesmore Fred­er­ick, an in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions con­sul­tant and lec­tur­er at the Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness said it is a mis­con­cep­tion to be­lieve that trade unions should stay out of pol­i­tics.

“A trade union­ist’s de­ci­sion to en­gage in po­lit­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties should be viewed as strate­gic. I am of the view that the oth­er func­tion of trade unions, such as eco­nom­ic and job reg­u­la­tion tends to add val­ue to the pow­er of trade unions which in my opin­ion is achiev­able through the in­flu­ence of a po­lit­i­cal par­ty and the leg­isla­tive arm of a gov­ern­ment with a labour ide­ol­o­gy.”

Fred­er­ick added that a trade union leader who forms a po­lit­i­cal par­ty would be more in­clined to un­der­stand the needs of work­ing-class peo­ple. He gave the ex­am­ple of Pan­day, who start­ed of as a trade union leader and even­tu­al­ly be­came Prime Min­is­ter.

“It is rea­son­able to con­cep­tu­alise and ap­pre­ci­ate the strate­gi­cal in­tent of a trade union leader want­i­ng to be af­fil­i­at­ed with a po­lit­i­cal par­ty that shares a com­mon labour ide­ol­o­gy. A trade union may con­sid­er it nec­es­sary to form its own po­lit­i­cal par­ty to be used as a medi­um to bring about so­cial changes in the in­ter­est who are not in the own­er­ship of a busi­ness. It is of the view that a po­lit­i­cal par­ty led by a for­mer trade union leader would be more in­clined to iden­ti­fy with the needs of the work­ing poor.”

He said Duke’s de­ci­sion to re­sign from the PSA to give him­self ful­ly to pol­i­tics may “al­low him to achieve ef­fec­tive so­cial changes through his own po­lit­i­cal agen­da rather than to be de­pen­dent on the good­will of a po­lit­i­cal par­ty that may be less in­clined to be labour ori­ent­ed or share his vi­sion.”

In­dus­tri­al re­la­tions con­sul­tant Robert Giusep­pi said there is noth­ing wrong with labour lead­ers get­ting in­volved in pol­i­tics as they should use any avail­able av­enue to fight for so­cial jus­tice.

Giusep­pi point­ed out that peo­ple from trade union back­grounds have per­son­al po­lit­i­cal po­si­tions and so it is nat­ur­al that when they leave the labour move­ment they go in­to pol­i­tics.

“The dis­ad­van­tage we have here is that the pop­u­la­tion is small and if one were to look at To­ba­go alone the pop­u­la­tion is even small­er. It will be pret­ty dif­fi­cult for any trade union­ist to bal­ance that sit­u­a­tion. In To­ba­go, every­thing is tan­gled up from pol­i­tics to trade unions work to busi­ness. It is all tied to­geth­er. Duke re­alised that trade union­ism and pol­i­tics can­not be sep­a­rat­ed in To­ba­go,” he said.

Not­ing that Duke has been fight­ing for work­ers all his life, Giusep­pi said it is left to be seen whether he has made the right de­ci­sion to leave the labour move­ment for full-time pol­i­tics.

“In To­ba­go, the THA is the biggest em­ploy­er and they de­pend on the state for near­ly every­thing. Duke is mov­ing from the work­ers’ side to the em­ploy­er’s side in the THA. Let’s see how he makes the tran­si­tion,” he said.

For­mer sec­re­tary-gen­er­al of the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers Union (CWU) Joseph Re­my de­fend­ed Duke’s de­ci­sion to tran­si­tion from labour in­to pol­i­tics. He ar­gued that the trade union fight for bet­ter con­di­tions for the work­ing class is close­ly linked to pol­i­tics and trade unions’ in­volve­ment in pol­i­tics is a re­gion­al and glob­al phe­nom­e­non.

“If you look at the wider Caribbean re­gion, St Vin­cent, An­tigua, Bar­ba­dos, and look at the names of those par­ties—Bar­ba­dos Labour Par­ty, St Vin­cent Labour Par­ty—all of those par­ties had their ori­gins through pro­gres­sive trade union­ism. They un­der­stood that pol­i­tics has to change on the ba­sis of some in­put from peo­ple. Trade union­ism is part of the po­lit­i­cal sys­tem,” Re­my said.

“But­ler mixed trade union­ism with pol­i­tics, Cipri­ani was al­so an ac­tive trade union­ist and politi­cian. At the end of the day, Duke has done an in­cred­i­ble job in staving off a PNM bat­tal­ion in To­ba­go which was led by the Prime Min­is­ter of all peo­ple. And now you are hear­ing all types of ex­perts say­ing trade union­ism and pol­i­tics don’t mix. I don’t see an is­sue with an ac­tive trade union­ist be­ing in­volved in pol­i­tics.”

He added that some peo­ple want trade unions to stick to core in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions is­sues but in the re­al world where pol­i­tics, the econ­o­my and trade unions are all in­ter­twined it is not so sim­ple.

“I don’t see a con­flict of in­ter­est. I un­der­stand that trade unions are see­ing dwin­dling num­bers but it has to do with the type of po­lit­i­cal sys­tem we prac­tise. We live in a cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem and the younger stu­dents at school are not taught the his­to­ry of the Caribbean re­gion. The his­to­ry of the re­gion is en­trenched with trade union lead­ers,” Re­my said.