Wes­ley Gib­bings

For­mer di­rec­tor of the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­gan­i­sa­tion (ILO) Of­fice for the Caribbean, Dr Ana Tere­sa Romero, is one for choos­ing her words very care­ful­ly in at least four lan­guages-Eng­lish, Span­ish, French and Por­tuguese. It is tempt­ing to add a fifth, "tri­par­tism"-the ILO's unique de­ci­sion-mak­ing mech­a­nism and lin­go. It might al­so be easy to add the Tri­ni ver­nac­u­lar to which she rarely re­sorts, but which she un­der­stands much bet­ter than many oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al col­leagues serv­ing the cur­rent net­work of Unit­ed Na­tions (UN) agen­cies lo­cat­ed in Port-of-Spain. Born in Venezuela, Romero, who left the coun­try for an­oth­er ILO as­sign­ment in Gene­va, Switzer­land, in Jan­u­ary, ac­tu­al­ly spent most of her child­hood and young adult years in T&T. The ILO is the on­ly UN agency which man­dates tri­par­tite rep­re­sen­ta­tion com­pris­ing gov­ern­ment, labour and em­ploy­ers. In fact, bind­ing agree­ments at the ILO are on­ly pos­si­ble if coun­tries are rep­re­sent­ed by all three sec­tors.

Trade agree­ments and so­cial is­sues

Asked if such an arrange­ment runs counter to the pre­vail­ing po­lit­i­cal cul­ture of the Caribbean, Romero told the Busi­ness Guardian short­ly be­fore her de­par­ture for Gene­va, on the con­trary, "it is one of the re­gions where it is rel­a­tive­ly eas­i­er to bring peo­ple to­geth­er to dis­cuss mat­ters at hand, be­cause de­spite the dif­fer­ences, there is a deep-root­ed in­ter­est in di­a­logue." She said the fact that both the Caribbean Con­gress of Labour (CCL) and the Caribbean Em­ploy­ers Con­fed­er­a­tion (CEC) ex­ist, paves the way for pro­mot­ing re­gion­al di­a­logue on labour is­sues, how­ev­er short on re­sources they might be and though "they might not see eye to eye on every­thing." They work to­geth­er on crit­i­cal is­sues like HIV/Aids, and the so­cial as­pects of trade agree­ments. To these or­gan­i­sa­tions, she adds the "uni­fy­ing force" of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies" (UWI). A UWI grad­u­ate her­self, she said the uni­ver­si­ty had pro­vid­ed a cadre of diplo­mats, labour lead­ers, em­ploy­ers and oth­er pub­lic of­fi­cials who are now at the helm of im­por­tant de­ci­sion-mak­ing in­sti­tu­tions.

"One of the things we have been en­cour­ag­ing is greater col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween em­ploy­ers' and work­ers' or­gan­i­sa­tions and aca­d­e­m­ic in­sti­tu­tions as well as labour col­leges," she said, cit­ing the role of the Mona School of Busi­ness at UWI, Mona and Cave Hill, in ex­plor­ing ap­proach­es to en­hanc­ing and fi­nanc­ing so­cial se­cu­ri­ty. "For oc­cu­pa­tion­al safe­ty and health, what­ev­er train­ing is to be pro­vid­ed, we make sure we im­press up­on the in­sti­tu­tions the need to tai­lor pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment cours­es or to part­ner with us in the de­liv­ery of train­ing to em­ploy­ers and work­ers rep­re­sen­ta­tives, many of whom are in­volved in work­place OSH com­mit­tees," Romero added. The Caribbean Of­fice of the ILO, she said, "serves the role of build­ing ca­pac­i­ty and bridges and help­ing peo­ple from dif­fer­ent parts of the Caribbean in­ter­act with each oth­er to ad­dress mat­ters re­lat­ed to the world of work, ex­chang­ing views on their ex­pe­ri­ences and very of­ten mak­ing con­tacts with each oth­er (out­side the ILO sys­tem and de­lib­er­a­tions)." Re­turn­ing to the Caribbean in 2005 meant Romero was walk­ing smack in­to a pe­ri­od of eco­nom­ic tran­si­tion in the Caribbean with im­por­tant im­pli­ca­tions for what the ILO lan­guage de­scribes as "the world of work" and the ap­pli­ca­tion of in­ter­na­tion­al labour stan­dards.

Cri­sis and pres­sures

The glob­al eco­nom­ic cri­sis of 2007/2008 raised ad­di­tion­al con­cern that so­cial dis­lo­ca­tion in the re­gion could have in­ten­si­fied-which it did, in some cir­cum­stances, but not to the ex­tent ini­tial­ly pre­dict­ed. In any event, the se­nior ILO of­fi­cial does not recog­nise any­thing to sug­gest the col­lapse of the in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions in­fra­struc­ture and process.

"When there is a cri­sis, there is a de­gree of pes­simism and in­evitable ten­sions in some quar­ters, but I cer­tain­ly do not see any signs of a demise. It just means that both the trade unions and em­ploy­ers' or­gan­i­sa­tions, as well as gov­ern­ment, have greater chal­lenges that will strain re­la­tions."Every­where (trade unions) are un­der pres­sure be­cause of the cri­sis," the for­mer ILO Caribbean head ex­plained, "be­cause if you have a num­ber of re­dun­dan­cies, if those peo­ple were or­gan­ised, you have few­er mem­bers." She added: "In ad­di­tion, if you have the dri­ve to­wards sub-con­tract­ing, short-term em­ploy­ment and in­di­vid­ual job con­tracts, then you are al­so like­ly to have few­er peo­ple who are go­ing to be­come union mem­bers.

"If you have sit­u­a­tions with peo­ple not un­der­stand­ing the val­ue of be­long­ing to a union, it means you have the chal­lenge of ed­u­cat­ing peo­ple (through a process of) labour ed­u­ca­tion-demon­strat­ing the val­ue of or­gan­i­sa­tions that rep­re­sent and de­fend your in­ter­est and al­so by show­ing the role that trade unions have to play in the process of de­mo­c­ra­t­ic, con­sul­ta­tive process­es."Romero said, sim­i­lar­ly, "If man­age­ment wants to dis­cuss is­sues such as pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and rel­e­vant train­ing for the labour mar­ket, you need to have your coun­ter­part with whom you can have a mean­ing­ful dis­cus­sion on the kinds of pro­pos­als that you should be putting for­ward to the gov­ern­ment on the poli­cies to be put in place." She ad­mits to "peaks and troughs of in­ter­ests" in the qual­i­ty of the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the so­cial part­ners in the Caribbean, but that the in­ter­est in so­cial di­a­logue has per­sist­ed. "There is recog­ni­tion of the need to en­gage in di­a­logue on eco­nom­ic and so­cial is­sues," she said, re­fer­ring specif­i­cal­ly to "so­cial part­ner­ship" arrange­ments in Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica, and ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est in such ini­tia­tives, in oth­er coun­tries, in­clud­ing T&T.

Romero made re­peat­ed ref­er­ence to the need to raise pub­lic aware­ness about the im­por­tance of sound in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prac­tices and the need for con­tin­ued so­cial di­a­logue on in­vest­ment, trade and labour poli­cies. The for­mer ILO Caribbean Of­fice di­rec­tor now heads the Of­fice of Ex­ter­nal Re­la­tions and Part­ner­ships in the ILO's De­part­ment of Part­ner­ships and De­vel­op­ment Co-op­er­a­tion in Gene­va. For her, this is a re­turn to a for­mer base, hav­ing earned a doc­tor­ate in in­ter­na­tion­al stud­ies from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Gene­va in 1988. She is a past stu­dent of St Fran­cois Col­lege in Bel­mont and the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus of the UWI, where she al­so worked as a re­search as­sis­tant at the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions. Be­fore leav­ing the coun­try, Romero sat with the Busi­ness Guardian re­flect­ing on the role of the ILO Caribbean Of­fice in sup­port­ing gov­ern­ments, em­ploy­ers and work­ers in their ef­forts to re­alise de­cent work, which in­cludes, rights at work and so­cial di­a­logue in the re­gion. The de­cent work team in Port-of-Spain pro­vides ser­vices to tri­par­tite con­stituents in 13 Cari­com states and nine "non-met­ro­pol­i­tan" ter­ri­to­ries of the Eng­lish- and Dutch-speak­ing Caribbean.