Elected government is where election promises go to die. To get elected, leaders make promises, which they may regret and when the time comes for payoff, square pegs could end up in round holes. New governments soon discover that making wrong decisions will come back to bite you. There are enormous challenges confronting the new government. Many will defy solution. For example, the economy, crime and corruption. There is no Partnership, PNM, UNC or COP way to deal with such problems. Attacking crime and corruption, an obvious test of will, could help the economy. However, xenophobic presumptions without considering economic repercussions will zero such gains.
Balanced decisions at Cabinet level are more productive than knee-jerk decrees by ministers for popular consumption. Sweeping statements regarding changes to the IRA, increased maternity leave, and the minimum wage leave no room for rational discussion on such serious issues. The election is over. It is time for sober analysis to avoid unintended consequences for the economy. Increased costs to small businesses will not help a tired economy, heading south. The reality is that in T&T increased benefits have never resulted in increased productivity in order to afford them. Small businesses can create the majority of new employment.
A major stumbling block however is the commercial landlord who has been regularly without justification increasing the rents of those businesses. Why not go after them instead? Of course landlords contribute to political parties. Small businesses cannot afford to do so. Impose additional costs on such businesses and the result is higher prices and unemployment. Increased costs for larger businesses simply lead to greater use of mechanisation–and therefore less employment. Government jobs derive from unproductive social engineering and are not sustainable. Only an incentive-based expanding private sector can provide a permanent productive economy.
Minimum wage talk by unions is just a myth. Collective agreements covering unionised workers provide on average up to more than four times the present minimum wage plus cost of living and other benefits. What is being proposed is an attack on the little, one-man, one-woman undertaking struggling to stay alive and individuals who employ household assistants. And since according to the proposal the assistant will now be able to take the household employer to court, those jobs will begin to evaporate. The Government needs to send positive messages in order to change the dependence syndrome that only the Government can or will provide jobs.
The original and still valid purpose of the IRA was to produce and maintain stability in industrial relations. The law is 45 years old and due to a lack of interference still serves that purpose. There are established authorities arising out of past court judgments. Meddling with the Act disturbs and distorts those authorities. The minister's new responsibilities require him to defend the IRA as it is written, not to tear it up in Fyzabad. He is required to ensure confidence in the court, the Government and his ministry by both business and labour. Mr McLeod's intelligence is a matter of record and he may, whenever he is able to make the transition, yet become one of the Government's valuable ministers.
However, as a Minister of Labour you do not go on a union platform and without wide consultation and debate say you intend to change a law that is 45 years old. Who is making policy, the minister or the Government? The court needs its powers to do its job. Interfere with those powers and it becomes useless. It is elementary. Laws are made and changed by Parliament, not by a show of hands or applause at a special-interests rally. It also embarrasses the principle of collective responsibility. The fundamental premise of the IRA is to avoid industrial disputes turning into private war. The main object of the Ministry of Labour.
In any case it is unbelievable that a newly elected Government with the extent of the serious problems inherited would even consider tinkering with the IRA as a priority. Mr McLeod should also remember that in his new dispensation when he speaks of employers, his Government is the largest employer in the country and he will be called upon to deal with imminent wage disputes with government unions. A long-time compatriot of the minister has also proposed changes to company law, to make severance pay a priority when a company ceases operation for whatever reasons.
What he is suggesting is to remove the main creditor's priority. No bank will lend money to such a company to start or maintain a business. The people of T&T look to the present government for sober and intelligent leadership. An assessment of what the Prime Minister has put together as a team appears to fit that requirement. Unfortunately, there is a creeping tendency among some ministers to publicly pronounce individual beliefs and intention as government policy. There will obviously be a period of learning on the job for new ministers. She should warn them that experience is the best teacher and that silence is better than wasted speech.