Wes­ley Gib­bings

In small economies such as ours in the Caribbean, there are bound to be anom­alies in the for­mal arrange­ments de­signed to achieve in­dus­tri­al peace, and en­su­ing wealth gen­er­a­tion, in­volv­ing work­ers, em­ploy­ers, and the state.

In many in­stances, there­fore, tri­par­tite arrange­ments re­flect mul­ti­ple points of du­al­i­ty. The state re­mains a ma­jor di­rect and in­di­rect em­ploy­er in most states. Work­ers’ rep­re­sen­ta­tives are de­clin­ing in sta­tus, es­pe­cial­ly with a grow­ing ma­jor­i­ty of work­ers em­ployed in the in­for­mal, non-unionised sec­tor, and through new in­vest­ments that in­clude no such com­pul­sion.

There is al­so rou­tinised re­liance by pri­vate sec­tor ac­tors on the state as a client and/or fi­nan­cial bene­fac­tor in one form or an­oth­er.

This does not ren­der a no­tion of “tri­par­tism” an over­ly tidy prospect. The glob­alised tem­plate does not sit eas­i­ly with our re­al­i­ty. This sub­ject came to mind be­cause of two ex­pe­ri­ences over­shad­owed by re­cent po­lit­i­cal shenani­gans here.

The first thought was in­spired by the par­tic­i­pa­tion of Labour Min­is­ter Leroy Bap­tiste at the 113th Ses­sion of the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Con­fer­ence in Gene­va in June. The sec­ond came dur­ing the brief vis­it of ILO Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al Gilbert F Houng­bo to Port-of-Spain (PoS) in April.

Bap­tiste is not, of course, the first politi­cian emerg­ing from ac­tive du­ty in trade union­ism to oc­cu­py such a post and to be ex­posed to and made to ad­dress the tri­par­tite ques­tion on a glob­al stage. It is al­so not the first time that the state, as a di­rect/in­di­rect em­ploy­er, is oc­cu­py­ing the pub­lic space in po­lit­i­cal­ly in­con­ve­nient ways.

The with­draw­al of or­gan­ised labour as a de­ci­sive play­er in the in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions world is al­so noth­ing new. Unions now rep­re­sent just about 25 per cent of the work­ing pop­u­la­tion in T&T. So, there was Min­is­ter Bap­tiste – mi­nus the open nu­ance of dual sta­tus – pledg­ing to “re-es­tab­lish and re­vi­talise the na­tion­al tri­par­tite body to im­prove our di­a­logue with labour bod­ies.”

That was June. Let’s see how that goes. Be­fore that, in April, the ILO of­fice in PoS re­spond­ed to ques­tions I had posed to DG Houng­bo by point­ing to de­clin­ing trust among the main play­ers and im­pli­ca­tions for the so­cio-eco­nom­ic well-be­ing of our coun­tries.

Al­most every­where you go, the ILO ar­gues, eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal in­sta­bil­i­ty is dis­rupt­ing jobs and break­ing down trust be­tween work­ers, em­ploy­ers, and gov­ern­ments. The Caribbean hasn’t es­caped that im­pact, and if you look close­ly, we are prob­a­bly ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the worst of it.

Suri­name, Be­lize, and Guyana are strength­en­ing their tri­par­tite bod­ies. Bar­ba­dos, dur­ing and af­ter the pan­dem­ic, al­so used its long-stand­ing So­cial Part­ner­ship to man­age ma­jor de­ci­sions - from job pro­tec­tion to tax re­form. Yet there is, in­struc­tive­ly, lit­tle ac­knowl­edg­ment on the ground in these coun­tries of these of­fi­cial­ly de­clared achieve­ments.

So­cial di­a­logue, com­pris­ing the three main play­ers - and I would add the un­rep­re­sent­ed work­ing class as a fourth and dis­tinct con­stituen­cy - is near to­tal col­lapse in most of our coun­tries. Some of this is due to the du­al­i­ty of in­ter­ests, as is the case in T&T – large­ly ex­pressed as the state as - pre­sum­ably but not re­li­ably - a sig­nif­i­cant, benev­o­lent em­ploy­er.

There is al­so the state as sole/main provider when it comes to so­cial pro­tec­tions. My con­cern is that the un­rep­re­sent­ed co­hort em­ployed in the bur­geon­ing in­for­mal sec­tor is par­tic­u­lar­ly vic­timised by the ab­sence of in­sti­tu­tion­alised di­a­logue on such mat­ters.

There has been a long­stand­ing thrust aimed at the mi­cro and small en­ter­prise sec­tor to en­cour­age en­try in­to the world of for­mal busi­ness. But it ap­pears that the cul­tur­al bars to this have over­whelmed the in­sti­tu­tion­al process­es.

By this I mean that even as this sec­tor is in­creas­ing in im­por­tance and, in a sense was a pan­dem­ic life­line, our sys­tems of gov­er­nance con­tin­ue to mar­gin­alise the as­so­ci­at­ed en­ter­pris­es.

Mean­while, in­for­mal­i­ty is weak­en­ing labour pro­tec­tions, damp­en­ing tax rev­enue, and un­der­min­ing sus­tain­able growth. In this re­spect, the ILO is sug­gest­ing that gov­ern­ments have not done near­ly enough to tack­le this.

Poli­cies to shift work­ers and busi­ness­es in­to the for­mal econ­o­my are weak. Even worse, nu­mer­ous reg­is­tered com­pa­nies are now re­ly­ing more on tem­po­rary, un­sta­ble con­tracts that blur the line be­tween for­mal and in­for­mal work.

There have been ef­forts by the T&T Cham­ber and oth­er busi­ness groups, but these are yet to reach the lev­el at which a broad­er em­brace is achieved. The cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion would do well to pay much clos­er at­ten­tion.

In the mean­time, re­al, non-far­ci­cal, mul­ti­par­tite so­cial di­a­logue awaits. We are nowhere near this in T&T. Trade union­ists in pow­er have nev­er made a re­al dif­fer­ence, have they?