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Sunday, February 16, 2025

National Productivity Council to boost T&T's competitiveness

by

20090902

A call has been made for the new­ly-formed Na­tion­al Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty Coun­cil to en­cour­age a clos­er re­la­tion­ship be­tween labour, the Gov­ern­ment and the pri­vate sec­tor for the coun­try to re­alise the tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits of in­creas­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (Natuc), Michael An­nisette, made this call last week at the launch of the Na­tion­al Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty Coun­cil which took place at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel, Port-of-Spain. "The Gov­ern­ment, man­age­ment and labour must un­der­stand that there is a link be­tween pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, com­pet­i­tive­ness and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment. We must place at the cen­tre of our ac­tiv­i­ties the goal of so­cial co­he­sion and hu­man sol­i­dar­i­ty."

He point­ed out that there is a close re­la­tion­ship be­tween pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and free trade. "The role of the Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty Coun­cil must be seen in the con­text of how T&T can com­pete with­in the con­text of free trade, glob­al­i­sa­tion and there­fore if we let down the con­cept of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in the work­place we do this at our own per­il." He added that pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is crit­i­cal to the sur­vival of or­gan­i­sa­tions. "Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is a fun­da­men­tal core of cor­po­rate sur­vival be­cause, un­like peo­ple in oth­er places, we be­lieve that labour, busi­ness and the Gov­ern­ment are crit­i­cal to the very ex­is­tence and sur­vival of T&T," he said. He said giv­en the de­mands of glob­al­i­sa­tion all stake­hold­ers must work to­geth­er.

"Be­cause of glob­al­i­sa­tion and the forces dri­ving it has cre­at­ed the con­di­tions for the Gov­ern­ment, labour and man­age­ment to work to­geth­er and to avoid the his­tor­i­cal con­fronta­tion­al ap­proach in re­solv­ing is­sues." He de­scribed pro­duc­tiv­i­ty as defin­ing com­pet­i­tive­ness. "Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is about hu­man cap­i­tal and al­so phys­i­cal cap­i­tal and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty de­ter­mines a coun­try's busi­ness and de­fines com­pet­i­tive­ness. It can im­prove the qual­i­ty of life and cre­ates wealth," he said. Sev­er­al key speak­ers ad­dressed the au­di­ence at the of­fi­cial launch of the Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty Coun­cil in­clud­ing Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning and Ruben Mc Sween, chair­man of the Em­ploy­ers Con­sul­ta­tive As­so­ci­a­tion (ECA).

Links to bet­ter life

Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning in his ad­dress pro­vid­ed em­pir­i­cal ev­i­dence show­ing that im­prove­ments in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty im­pacts on eco­nom­ic growth and lead to a bet­ter qual­i­ty of life for cit­i­zens. "In­creased pro­duc­tiv­i­ty at­tracts in­vest­ment, cre­ates jobs, im­proves earn­ings and sta­bilis­es the cur­ren­cy. The work­force gains bet­ter wages and re­wards, at­trac­tive work­ing con­di­tions, new op­por­tu­ni­ties for per­son­al de­vel­op­ment," he said. Man­ning added that the na­tion­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty move­ment that the Gov­ern­ment is stim­u­lat­ing with the in­stal­la­tion of the Na­tion­al Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty Coun­cil sub­scribes to a new school of ap­proach to pro­duc­tiv­i­ty known as the "high road" where coun­tries com­pete on good qual­i­ty jobs and prod­ucts.

He added that pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is not just about de­vel­op­ing the eco­nom­ic cap­i­tal but al­so the hu­man and so­cial cap­i­tal of the coun­try. He con­tin­ued by say­ing that the State is al­so im­por­tant in lead­ing the way in rais­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty lev­els. "The Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to be the largest em­ploy­er, the largest in­vestor and the prin­ci­pal agent of eco­nom­ic and so­cial de­vel­op­ment in the coun­try. The lev­el of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in the pub­lic sec­tor is there­fore a ma­jor de­ter­mi­nant in the qual­i­ty of life of the cit­i­zen­ry and the lev­el of com­pet­i­tive­ness as a na­tion."

He said the Gov­ern­ment is play­ing its part in strength­en­ing the foun­da­tions for in­creased pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and re­ferred to an in­dex pro­duced by the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) that showed that there has been an up­ward trend in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty for the last decade. Man­ning said that na­tion­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty im­prove­ment de­pends up­on the in­volve­ment of all stake­hold­ers, em­ploy­ers, trade unions and NGOs. "It is cru­cial that for progress to be made and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty im­proved that all play­ers un­der­stand that it is a shared re­spon­si­bil­i­ty," he said.

Ur­gent need

Ruben Mc Sween, chair­man of the Em­ploy­ers Con­sul­ta­tive As­so­ci­a­tion (ECA), called for the Gov­ern­ment to en­sure that the Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty Coun­cil is pro­vid­ed with all the re­quired re­sources to en­sure that it works. Ac­cord­ing to the Na­tion­al Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty Coun­cil, some of its aims are:

�2 To pre­pare an op­er­a­tional bud­get for the Na­tion­al Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty Cen­tre and in­clude an im­me­di­ate and long-term fund­ing mech­a­nism

�2 To ad­vise the Gov­ern­ment on the for­mu­la­tion of na­tion­al poli­cies and strate­gies on all as­pects of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, qual­i­ty and com­pet­i­tive­ness

�2 To iden­ti­fy con­straints to the im­prove­ment of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, qual­i­ty and com­pet­i­tive­ness and pro­pose re­me­di­al mea­sures to be tak­en

�2 To de­vel­op and adopt a set of key pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in­di­ca­tors for T&T

Mc Sween said there is a greater need now for Na­tion­al Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty Coun­cil giv­en the con­tem­po­rary en­vi­ron­ment the coun­try ex­ists in.

"The need for this coun­cil be­came more and more im­per­a­tive, giv­en the com­plex­i­ties of do­ing busi­ness and the in­di­vid­ual abil­i­ties which de­mand more ef­fec­tive in­stru­ments of mea­sure­ment to com­bine with the va­garies of re­la­tion­ships, pol­i­tics and glob­al com­pet­i­tive­ness and in­deed the rude per­sua­sive­ness of the pres­sures of cli­mate change," he said. He added that all stake­hold­ers need to use every op­por­tu­ni­ty at their dis­pos­al to recog­nise and pub­licly praise those sit­u­a­tions where pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is high and equal­ly crit­i­cise those sit­u­a­tions where pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is low. "As a peo­ple we need to be­come in­tol­er­ant of low pro­duc­tiv­i­ty if we are to achieve the 20/20 vi­sion of T&T."

High­er stan­dard of liv­ing

Labour Min­is­ter Ren­nie Du­mas in Feb­ru­ary 2008 said that the Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty Coun­cil would be set up to en­able the coun­try to face in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion and to lead to im­prove­ments in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. Cab­i­net then ap­proved the set­ting up of a pro­duc­tiv­i­ty coun­cil at the start of the third quar­ter in 2008. In his ad­dress he said that im­proved pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is not on­ly linked to the per­for­mance of firms and in­dus­tries but it is fun­da­men­tal to the liv­ing stan­dards of cit­i­zens.

Ad­mit­ting that the work of the coun­cil "seems in­sur­mount­able," he said the need for a pro­duc­tiv­i­ty mind­set is now more im­por­tant than any­time in the re­cent eco­nom­ic his­to­ry of the coun­try. He not­ed that one of the chal­lenges fac­ing the coun­cil would be to find an ap­pro­pri­ate yard­stick or pro­duc­tiv­i­ty gauge to mea­sure pro­duc­tiv­i­ty lev­els among the var­i­ous sec­tors that make up the econ­o­my. "The most com­mon mea­sure of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is through labour pro­duc­tiv­i­ty which re­lates out­put to em­ploy­ment or labour hours," he said.

First-world sta­tus

Roslyn Khan-Cum­mings, per­ma­nent sec­re­tary, Min­istry of Labour, de­scribed the launch of the Na­tion­al Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty Coun­cil as be­ing of "ex­tra­or­di­nary na­tion­al sig­nif­i­cance." She said the es­tab­lish­ment of the coun­cil is a step in­to the world of in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tice as T&T moves full steam ahead in­to de­vel­oped world sta­tus. She point­ed to oth­er coun­tries that have set up pro­duc­tiv­i­ty cen­tres with great suc­cess. "Coun­tries such a Japan and the Unit­ed States, and Bar­ba­dos in our re­gion have es­tab­lished pro­duc­tiv­i­ty coun­cils and have been able to achieve greater com­pet­i­tive­ness and ac­cel­er­ate their na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment," she said.

She added that sus­tained pro­duc­tiv­i­ty–which is an in­di­ca­tor of eco­nom­ic growth–can on­ly oc­cur in an en­vi­ron­ment where equal at­ten­tion is paid to get­ting op­ti­mal val­ue out of time, re­sources, in­no­v­a­tive­ness, sound man­age­ment, good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions, strong in­sti­tu­tions while erad­i­cat­ing ob­sta­cles to pro­duc­tiv­i­ty such as un­pro­duc­tive prac­tices and at­ti­tudes. "To change the cul­tur­al DNA will re­quire a men­tal meta­mor­pho­sis, a refer­til­i­sa­tion of the cog­ni­tive land­scape of work­ers in T&T, im­plor­ing work­ers across our coun­try to change their mind­set, the way we do busi­ness and har­ness a pas­sion, hone new skills and evolve in­to a co­he­sive com­pet­i­tive team ready for busi­ness."


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