Rapheal John-Lall

In the cur­rent eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment, em­ploy­ers and the labour move­ment must ad­dress con­tract and oth­er forms of non-stan­dard em­ploy­ment, Labour Min­is­ter Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus said yes­ter­day.

"Giv­en re­cent de­vel­op­ments on the eco­nom­ic and labour fronts, par­tic­u­lar­ly with the grow­ing spate of re­trench­ment, is­sues per­ti­nent to em­ploy­ment and de­cent work must as­sume greater promi­nence.

"Con­tract em­ploy­ment has been a grow­ing and bur­den­some is­sue that many have been speak­ing about but lit­tle ac­tion has been tak­en to fa­cil­i­tate gen­uine di­a­logue and se­ri­ous ex­am­i­na­tion of this is­sue in T&T," she said.

Bap­tiste-Primus spoke yes­ter­day at the Min­istry of Labour's work­shop on con­tract em­ploy­ment at the Hilton Ho­tel and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, St Ann's.Be­fore the work­shop be­gan, mem­bers of the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC) led by sec­re­tary gen­er­al Michael An­nisette protest­ed out­side the main en­trance of the Hilton Ho­tel.

They said the protest was to high­light the plight of work­ers at Caribbean Crew­ing and Man­ning Ser­vices Ltd which pro­vides tug boat ser­vices at the na­tion's ports.Af­ter the protest, An­nisette joined a pan­el dis­cus­sion at the work­shop.

Bap­tiste-Primus, who said con­tract em­ploy­ment is preva­lent in the pub­lic ser­vice, told work­shop par­tic­i­pants: "One of the ear­ly ac­tions tak­en by this Gov­ern­ment since as­sum­ing of­fice has been the es­tab­lish­ment of a Com­mit­tee on Con­tract Labour.

"The mem­bers of this Com­mit­tee in­clude rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer, the Di­rec­tor of Per­son­nel Ad­min­is­tra­tion, the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and the Min­istry of Fi­nance. This Com­mit­tee, which is al­so part of to­day's work­shop, is no doubt very much in­ter­est­ed in the dis­cus­sions which will as­sist it in mak­ing rec­om­men­da­tions to move for­ward in reg­u­lar­is­ing the em­ploy­ment sit­u­a­tion of many work­ers in the pub­lic sec­tor."

The min­is­ter al­so re­ferred to the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­ga­ni­za­tion's (ILO) 2015 Re­port which spoke about the grow­ing trend of con­tract labour around the world.

"The ILO, in its World Em­ploy­ment and So­cial Out­look Re­port 2015, not­ed that there has been a glob­al shift to more in­se­cure jobs, from the tra­di­tion­al em­ploy­ment re­la­tion­ship to more non-stan­dard forms of em­ploy­ment, since the fi­nan­cial cri­sis of 2008/2009 which fu­elled grow­ing in­equal­i­ty and high­er rates of pover­ty," she said.

"The Re­port re­vealed that it is es­ti­mat­ed that on­ly a quar­ter of the world's work­ers, that is one in four work­ers, are on per­ma­nent con­tracts with the re­main­ing three quar­ters em­ployed on tem­po­rary or short-term con­tracts, work­ing in­for­mal­ly of­ten with­out any con­tract, are self-em­ployed or are in un­paid fam­i­ly jobs."