Some commentators continue to labour under the misapprehension that trade unions are departments of business organisations and that they are required to endorse and encourage the employers' initiatives. They do not seem to understand, or perhaps accept, that a trade union's purpose is to protect the rights and interests of its members. While the success of the organisation must be of concern to the union, the failure or profitability is predicated upon the decisions of the management, in most cases without the input of or consultation with the employees. Examples of bad decisions abound and the recent crisis in the finance sector in the US is only the latest, and perhaps the most blatant, of this lunacy. Of course, the drama was played out in our local situation with CL Financial, where the decisions that were made by its executives were in no way influenced by any trade union. That does not prevent these commentators from suggesting that workers need to cut back and be grateful that they even have jobs after the fat-cat executives have bled the company dry.
The worst part is that trade unions have been warning against the recklessness for years, pointing to all the signs that the country is headed downhill on a ride to oblivion, and that mindless greed is the driving force behind the lunacy. There are those who opposed the call by the trade union movement in November 2009 for action to bring a sense of reality to the economic decisions being made. Some people have referred to the perceived loss of revenue to the country as a result of these actions. Strangely, there is no reference to revenue loss over the CL Financial debacle, or the "economic blip" (according to the Prime Minister) which appears to be ongoing despite the apparent buoyancy of energy prices. That probably has to do with the fact that these losses all counted in the billions, and in fact may never be fully known because of the ripple effect. Or maybe it is because it is in the interest of these commentators to pretend that they did not occur, or had no cost at all.
What we can be sure of is that no trade union or trade unionist had any part whatever to play in the decisions that led to the crisis, did not profit in any way from it, and warned vociferously and vigorously against it. The situation developed precisely because the proponents of the "greed is good" philosophy refused to take heed of the warnings of trade unionists. One commentator even questioned whether "unions have lost the plot." The truth is that unions never had the plot, at least not the plot held by people like him. Trade unions are about people and their rights, not people as factors of production, to be accounted for in the profit and loss margin. If businessmen and executives took greater cognisance of the advice of trade unionists and resisted the desire to place the profit motive ahead of human development, the western world would not be in the dire financial straits in which it now finds itself.
Karan Mahabirsingh
Chase Village