Pres­i­dent of the In­dus­tri­al Court Deb­o­rah Thomas-Fe­lix has called for tri­par­tite part­ners to en­gage in con­struc­tive di­a­logue. She said this will strength­en the labour mar­ket and con­tribute to col­lec­tive agree­ment.

Thomas-Fe­lix made the state­ment on Mon­day in her ad­dress at the 2022/2023 open­ing of the In­dus­tri­al Court.

Sev­er­al per­ti­nent is­sues were ad­dressed in­clud­ing tri­par­tism, col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ments and the record of In­dus­tri­al Court cas­es for the last few years.

She said, “It is im­per­a­tive that the tri­par­tite part­ners who are in fact lead­ers in the world of work, set aside their dif­fer­ences and have that dif­fi­cult but pre­lim­i­nary meet­ing, and the much-need­ed dis­cus­sion on the ele­phant in the room with a view to re­solve dif­fer­ences, to lis­ten and to un­der­stand the dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives and to agree to a struc­ture of a vi­able work­ing method­ol­o­gy at the lev­el of the na­tion­al tri­par­tite ad­vi­so­ry coun­cil.”

Ac­cord­ing to Thomas-Fe­lix, for the pe­ri­od Sep­tem­ber 2021 to Sep­tem­ber 2022, 23 ne­go­ti­a­tion cas­es were filed—a sig­nif­i­cant­ly small­er amount than the pre­vi­ous year, where 42 ne­go­ti­a­tion cas­es had been filed at court.

Thomas-Fe­lix ac­knowl­edged the promi­nence of ne­go­ti­a­tions that oc­cur among the unions and the lev­els of anx­i­ety it has con­tributed to over the years.

Due to this, she added that it was “note­wor­thy” that sev­er­al new col­lec­tive agree­ments had been fi­nalised in the pri­vate sec­tor, over the past few years.

Re­gard­ing the re­cent surge in protests sur­round­ing the four per­cent wage in­crease of­fer from the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer, Thomas-Fe­lix urged the coun­cil to ful­fil their role of as­sist­ing in the res­o­lu­tion of these is­sues.

“There have been a grow­ing num­ber of protests in this coun­try. Sev­er­al of which are cen­tred on what is per­ceived as so­cial ills and lack of so­cial ameni­ties. In ad­di­tion, there have been protests re­lat­ed to work­ing con­di­tions, job loss­es and ne­go­ti­a­tions for new terms and con­di­tions at work,” Thomas-Fe­lix not­ed.

“The tri­par­tite ad­vi­so­ry coun­cil needs to get to work... It is there­fore in the na­tion­al in­ter­est for the tri­par­tite part­ners to meet, to have mean­ing­ful dis­cus­sions, em­brace their dif­fer­ent roles to ad­dress burn­ing is­sues,” she added.

She urged trade unions and Gov­ern­ment agen­cies to join, in or­der to en­hance con­ver­sa­tions around these work-re­lat­ed is­sues.

She al­so added that it was nec­es­sary to have con­tin­ued col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween em­ploy­ers and trade unions to sup­port pol­i­cy mak­ing in the work­place as this would lead to sus­tain­able re­cov­ery post COVID-19.

The to­tal num­ber of new cas­es filed at the In­dus­tri­al Court from the be­gin­ning of the pan­dem­ic in March 2020, un­til Sep­tem­ber 14, 2022, stood at 2516 cas­es.

“These fig­ures tell a sto­ry and sug­gest that there is a need for more dis­cus­sions and agree­ment in the work­place,” Thomas-Fe­lix said.