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Monday, February 17, 2025

Pan and the future of work

by

Guardian Media
2196 days ago
20190212
COLUMNIST

COLUMNIST

Irving Ward

Wes­ley Gib­bings

What do Panora­ma 2019 and the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­gan­i­sa­tion’s (ILO) ob­ses­sion with “the fu­ture of work” have in com­mon? Every­thing. There he goes again, you say: “Pan–the great­est thing we do” and all that stuff.

No mat­ter how hard I try, es­pe­cial­ly at this time of year, I keep com­ing back to a con­ver­sa­tion—In­de­pen­dence Square cir­ca 1987—with the late, great Kei­th Smith. I had sug­gest­ed then that if pan was the great­est thing we do; how come we are stak­ing so much of our fu­ture on an in­dus­try (en­er­gy) that has a fi­nite shelf life?

Why aren’t we har­ness­ing more out of the vast en­er­gy gen­er­at­ed by a cen­tral el­e­ment of the cre­ative in­dus­try? Mea­sure the man-hours, the cre­ative en­deav­our, use of the phys­i­cal el­e­ments—in­stru­ments, fa­cil­i­ties and space, the modes of so­cial or­gan­i­sa­tion—lead­er­ship, com­mu­nal re­la­tions, and the eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty in­volved in­clud­ing the gross­ly un­der-ex­ploit­ed in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty val­ue of both in­stru­ment and mu­sic.

Then, on Mon­day came the ad­vi­so­ry that the ILO’s Bu­reau for Work­ers’ Ac­tiv­i­ties had sched­uled a “high-lev­el sub-re­gion­al con­fer­ence” in Port-of-Spain which opens to­mor­row. Good tim­ing (wink, wink)! Noth­ing wrong with re­gion­al trade union folks work­ing and play­ing hard, I sup­pose. Per­haps, at some stage, we would all get it.

The tim­ing is per­fect for a dis­cus­sion on how in­dige­nous val­ue can con­tribute to­ward the shap­ing of eco­nom­ic spaces that are sus­tain­able over the long haul and which make use of the things at which we most ex­cel. Hope­ful­ly, the ILO op­por­tu­ni­ty is not wast­ed.

This is not as lofty and as es­o­teric as I am prob­a­bly mak­ing it sound. The ILO, which in­ci­den­tal­ly ob­serves 100 years of ex­is­tence this year, has con­sis­tent­ly been con­cerned about changes in the labour mar­ket oc­ca­sioned by the rise of the new na­tion­al and glob­al economies.

And what are the re­al­i­ties be­ing ad­dressed? For one, tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vances that are gen­er­at­ing greater ef­fi­cien­cies and de­liv­er­ing more goods and ser­vices are tend­ing to cre­ate more jobs in the new sec­tors than those be­ing lost in the tra­di­tion­al.

We are al­so grow­ing in­creas­ing­ly con­cerned about the plan­et’s en­vi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty and wit­ness­ing in­no­va­tions that are gen­er­at­ing em­ploy­ment in the “green­ing” of our economies, while car­bon and re­source-in­ten­sive in­dus­tries scale back in keep­ing with new sus­tain­able de­vel­op­men­tal ob­jec­tives.

The world is al­so go­ing through a phase in which un­even de­mo­graph­ic shifts—a com­bi­na­tion of age­ing pop­u­la­tions in some coun­tries and the dom­i­nance of youth in oth­ers—that are im­pos­ing new pres­sures on labour mar­kets and so­cial se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems.

Every­where, there is a com­pul­sion to do things dif­fer­ent­ly. T&T can be said to be, in many re­spects, at the heart of the un­fold­ing rev­o­lu­tion—one that can bear whole­some fruit, but that can al­so leave us in sham­bles. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, our cur­rent tra­jec­to­ry favours the lat­ter sce­nario over the for­mer. We seem to be cap­tured by a strat­e­gy that has us at­tempt­ing to do the same old things bet­ter.

In this, all recog­nised so­cial part­ners—the State, busi­ness and labour—have fall­en short. And this is part­ly be­cause the key to un­lock­ing our po­ten­tial re­sides in oth­er­wise mar­gin­alised sec­tors that do not fit tidi­ly with the pre­scribed for­mu­la­tion of the need­ed part­ner­ship.

Old prej­u­dices, to come back to the ques­tion of pan, keep the in­stru­ment and all it rep­re­sents on the mar­gins of for­mal recog­ni­tion as a po­ten­tial­ly pow­er­ful eco­nom­ic tool. Wit­ness the hor­ror, oc­ca­sioned by ig­no­rance, at the news that over­seas steel­pan man­u­fac­tur­ers are op­er­at­ing thriv­ing busi­ness­es.

I have asked peo­ple who know bet­ter to please, please of­fer the in­for­ma­tion to show that some “copy­right” (they mean “patent”) con­cerns are high­ly mis­placed—though there is a pow­er­ful point to not miss­ing out on the op­por­tu­ni­ties when it comes to in­no­va­tions.

We may soon al­so lose a vir­tu­al mo­nop­oly on the pan-tun­ing “in­dus­try”—we don’t call it that, but it is an in­dus­try. And, ar­rang­ing for pan, though we have the best pan arrangers in the world right here, will slip through our fin­gers if we con­tin­ue to fo­cus sole­ly on the Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion to dis­play the best.

I don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly need to go back 32 years to con­tin­ue to as­sert that pan, in all its di­men­sions, of­fers to us and “the world of work” a way out of eco­nom­ic per­il. We are al­ready 100 years be­hind, but we can do this.


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