Raphael John-Lall

raphael.lall@guardian.co.tt

Gov­ern­ment has made very lit­tle head­way with its goals for in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions in its Roadmap to Re­cov­ery plan. That is the view of trade union­ists and an in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions con­sul­tant and Min­is­ter of Labour Stephen Mc Clashie ad­mits there, has been a set­back in terms of the goals set when the ex­er­cise start­ed a year ago.

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic brought sweep­ing changes to T&T and the world in the way peo­ple work and oth­er labour-re­lat­ed de­vel­op­ments and Gov­ern­ment’s stat­ed ob­jec­tives in this new en­vi­ron­ment in­cludes a new lev­el of en­gage­ment and trans­form­ing the work en­vi­ron­ment.

Pri­or­i­ty items in­clude a shift away from “the poor work eth­ic, ap­a­thy and in­ac­tion that have be­come char­ac­ter­is­tic of the T&T so­ci­ety,” to be­come more pro­duc­tive.

 Ac­cord­ing to the Roadmap doc­u­ment, “this re­quires the adop­tion by all cit­i­zens, cham­pi­oned and ex­am­pled by the lead­ers (in­clud­ing politi­cians) of the coun­try, of a new way of think­ing, cre­at­ing and liv­ing.” 

An­oth­er goal is cre­at­ing an en­vi­ron­ment of har­mo­ny and in­clu­sive­ness that “starts with a vi­sion that is re­lat­able, rel­e­vant and en­gag­ing in pos­si­bil­i­ty and pos­i­tiv­i­ty. The frame­work for reignit­ing the na­tion­al val­ue sys­tem is en­cap­su­lat­ed with­in the na­tion­al watch­words–Dis­ci­pline, Pro­duc­tion and Tol­er­ance and uni­ver­sal­ly em­braces the prin­ci­ples of safe­ty, har­mo­ny, in­clu­sive­ness and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.”

The over­ar­ch­ing strat­e­gy of the Roadmap to Re­cov­ery com­mit­tee is to cre­ate a plat­form for na­tion­al di­a­logue “to en­gen­der change in the na­tion­al iden­ti­ty of the Trin­bag­on­ian to­ward one of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty to achieve in all spheres of the so­ci­ety.”

To achieve this, the com­mit­tee rec­om­mend­ed: 

- Re­vival of key in­sti­tu­tions to dri­ve change in T&T’s na­tion­al iden­ti­ty in­clud­ing the Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty Coun­cil and NTAC;

- Build­ing an open and trans­par­ent ac­cord among the so­cial part­ners---Gov­ern­ment, labour and the pri­vate sec­tor---for pro­duc­tive en­gage­ment in an en­vi­ron­ment of peace and har­mo­ny. Dis­cord and ac­ri­mo­ny will be un­pro­duc­tive and ex­act a heavy price on the de­vel­op­ment of our coun­try.

How­ev­er, al­most a year af­ter these goals had been set, the labour move­ment left the Na­tion­al Tri­par­tite Ad­vi­so­ry Coun­cil (NTAC), the or­gan­i­sa­tion formed in 2016 to pro­vide a fo­rum where gov­ern­ment, busi­ness and labour could de­vel­op poli­cies on na­tion­al is­sues re­lat­ed to em­ploy­ers, em­ploy­ees and the in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions process.

Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is ac­cept­ed the res­ig­na­tions of labour rep­re­sen­ta­tives from NTAC in April, thanked them “for their in­valu­able con­tri­bu­tions to the de­lib­er­a­tions and ini­tia­tives of the coun­cil and wished them well in their fu­ture un­der­tak­ings.”

Mc­Clashie said al­though the labour move­ment has left NTAC, trade unions com­mu­ni­cate with dif­fer­ent arms of the Min­istry of Labour. He said Gov­ern­ment “as a re­spon­si­ble part­ner,” Mc Clashie said, will con­tin­ue di­a­logue with busi­ness and labour.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, all is not lost as the labour move­ment had made con­tri­bu­tions to im­por­tant pieces of leg­is­la­tion over the last few years, in­clud­ing the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act (IRA) and the Re­trench­ment and Sev­er­ance Ben­e­fits Act (RS­BA).

“We can­not make a de­fin­i­tive state­ment and say it has been a fail­ure as in the last four or five years the trade union move­ment has been an in­te­gral part in the de­ter­mi­na­tion of new pieces of leg­is­la­tion. These pieces of leg­is­la­tion must go through ex­ten­sive con­sul­ta­tion and it takes time. Those rec­om­men­da­tions are now with the Cab­i­net,” Mc­Clashie said.

In ad­di­tion, a Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty Coun­cil has been con­sti­tut­ed as out­lined in the Roadmap doc­u­ment and the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment and the Unit­ed Na­tions have be­gun to do work in this area.

Job loss­es 

Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) sec­ond-quar­ter da­ta for 2019, shows that out of a labour force of 611,200, the num­ber of Gov­ern­ment paid em­ploy­ees is 159,900 and non-gov­ern­ment em­ploy­ees 300,900. The rest were clas­si­fied as un­paid work­ers, self-em­ployed and ap­pren­tices.

Those num­bers are be­lieved to have de­clined since then, fol­low­ing a re­duc­tion in eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty and the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic which threw T&T in­to a tail­spin. Busi­ness­es were forced to shut down or re­duce their op­er­a­tions and thou­sands of peo­ple lost their jobs.

In mid-De­cem­ber 2020, the Cen­tral Bank paint­ed a grim pic­ture in its Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy Re­port, which showed that eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty con­tract­ed in the en­er­gy and non-en­er­gy sec­tors in the first half of the year.

Mc­Clashie said the lat­est da­ta shows that 3,800 peo­ple no­ti­fied the Min­istry of Labour that they had lost their jobs since the pan­dem­ic start­ed in March 2020. He does not ex­pect the eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion to wors­en as he be­lieves it has al­ready peaked.

“The coun­try has be­gun to open up a bit. I think we reached that peak in May or ear­ly June. Now that busi­ness­es are re­open­ing and busi­ness­es be­ing re-en­gaged, you will see a dip in un­em­ploy­ment,” he said

How­ev­er, he cau­tioned that cit­i­zens should not ex­pect too much too soon as there needs to be an in­vest­ment and struc­tur­al changes at work­places such as the re­tool­ing of em­ploy­ees be­fore busi­ness­es reach their op­ti­mum ca­pac­i­ty.

The pan­dem­ic and its ac­com­pa­ny­ing prob­lems, in­clud­ing work­ing at home, poor broad­band and in­ter­net, low­er pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and ris­ing pover­ty and have made it an up­hill bat­tle to achieve the Gov­ern­ment’s Roadmap goals.

On the is­sue of em­ploy­ees work­ing from home, Mc Clashie said the feed­back from pri­vate sec­tor em­ploy­ers is that they are sat­is­fied with the out­put from em­ploy­ees at home.

But the min­is­ter ad­mit­ted that in the pub­lic sec­tor there were mixed re­sults.

“Those pub­lic ser­vants who in­ter­face with the pub­lic can­not do their work from home, so we had a sys­tem of ro­ta­tion. But for those who could work from home, we have been sat­is­fied with their per­for­mance,” he said.

Post pan­dem­ic, the min­is­ter ex­pects many work­places to con­tin­ue with work-from-home.

Vet­er­an trade union­ist and for­mer gen­er­al sec­re­tary Coun­cil of Pro­gres­sive Trade Unions Ce­cil Paul es­ti­mates that less than 20 per cent of T&T’s work­force is unionised at present, down from a high of 40 per cent in the 1980s.

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He said the trade union move­ment has ex­pe­ri­enced de­clines in mem­ber­ship over the last few decades and is now weak­ened as it con­fronts new chal­lenges.

Weigh­ing in on vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy among work­ers, Paul said: “From an in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions point of view, one can­not uni­lat­er­al­ly change the terms and con­di­tions of em­ploy­ees’ con­tracts. Com­pul­so­ry vac­ci­na­tions go against the em­ploy­ees’ terms and con­di­tions be­cause those em­ploy­ees did not agree to that when they en­tered the work con­tract.”

Se­ri­ous er­ror by labour

In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions con­sul­tant and Arthur Lok Jack lec­tur­er Lesmore Fred­er­ick said the Roadmap doc­u­ment is “not a fail­ure” but the of­fi­cials who pre­pared the doc­u­ment should have been more spe­cif­ic about the scope of ref­er­ence and how the re­sults would be quan­ti­fied.

“I don’t know what those ob­jec­tives were and what they want­ed to achieve. Were there any doc­u­ments for the scope of that theme?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I am not sure what was the method­ol­o­gy used by the team to col­lect the da­ta. I’m not sure they un­der­stood what was re­quired. How could we call it a fail­ure and we don’t know the find­ings of the doc­u­ment?”

On the is­sue of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and the new work-from-home trend, Fred­er­ick said there needs to be strate­gic plan­ning at the gov­ern­ment and cor­po­rate lev­els on how em­ploy­ees will func­tion and the kind of train­ing need­ed.

“We are ask­ing the work­ing pop­u­la­tion to get in­volved when they may not have that train­ing to work from home. De­vel­oped coun­tries have been do­ing that for a long while. This is new to us. Com­pa­nies need to in­vest in that,” he said

Fred­er­ick be­lieves the labour move­ment made a “se­ri­ous er­ror” by pulling out of tri­par­tite talks with the Gov­ern­ment. They should have stayed and con­tin­ued con­tribut­ing to that plat­form as they no longer in­flu­ence de­ci­sion mak­ing, he said.

“If we don’t have the three main ac­tors, gov­ern­ment, busi­ness and labour, and if they are not work­ing to­geth­er then we are doomed.”

On the is­sue of vac­cines, Fred­er­ick said a sig­nal has al­ready been sent about the ab­sence of leg­is­la­tion and the fact that there is noth­ing for em­ploy­ers to en­force. He said the is­sue has to be looked at with­in the scope of the Oc­cu­pa­tion Safe­ty and  Health (OSH) Act and there needs to be a na­tion­al con­sul­ta­tion that takes in­to ac­count in­di­vid­ual rights.

“I would like to see labour in­volved in the con­ver­sa­tion so unions have a role to play. We can’t force peo­ple, but we are in a se­ri­ous po­si­tion and lives are be­ing lost. What is the strat­e­gy to be used to get peo­ple to change their minds and get vac­ci­nat­ed?” he asked.

ECA: Sit­u­a­tion may have wors­ened

In a state­ment, the Em­ploy­ers’ Con­sul­ta­tive As­so­ci­a­tion (ECA) said “an ob­jec­tive analy­sis will re­veal that the an­tic­i­pat­ed gains have not been re­alised.”

“In fact, hav­ing scanned the in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions en­vi­ron­ment and based on our own in­ter­ac­tion with em­ploy­ers, it is plau­si­ble that the sit­u­a­tion may have wors­ened in the cur­rent en­vi­ron­ment. The with­draw­al of the trade union move­ment from NTAC was a clear in­di­ca­tion of this state of af­fairs, and to­geth­er with the con­tin­ued neg­a­tive im­pact of the pan­dem­ic on busi­ness and em­ploy­ment, we be­lieve that the har­mo­nious in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions en­vi­ron­ment en­vi­sioned is now fur­ther away.”

The ECA not­ed that the trade union move­ment had con­tributed to the fi­nal­i­sa­tion of im­por­tant pieces of labour-re­lat­ed leg­is­la­tion and said there had been suc­cess­es with pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and work­ing from home.

“As pre­vi­ous­ly in­di­cat­ed, the abil­i­ty of most busi­ness­es to tran­si­tion some or all of their work­ers to re­mote work arrange­ments is tes­ta­ment to the re­silience of many in the pri­vate sec­tor. Fur­ther­more, a fol­low-up busi­ness needs sur­vey con­duct­ed in 2021 by the ECA in­di­cat­ed that while just 12 per cent of em­ploy­ers al­ready used work from home arrange­ments pri­or to COVID-19, 40 per cent in­di­cat­ed that they in­tend­ed to con­tin­ue us­ing work from home arrange­ments once the pan­dem­ic is over. This, we be­lieve, is a good in­di­ca­tion of the pos­i­tive im­pact that work from home would have had on pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.”

On the is­sue of vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy, the ECA re­it­er­at­ed its stat­ed po­si­tion that mak­ing vac­cines manda­to­ry must be well-re­searched with in­puts from stake­hold­ers at all lev­els be­fore any pol­i­cy de­ci­sion is de­clared or leg­is­la­tion en­act­ed.

Goals not met

Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) trustee and labour rep­re­sen­ta­tive on the Roadmap to Re­cov­ery Com­mit­tee Christo­pher Hen­ry said most of the ob­jec­tives set out in the doc­u­ment have not been met.

“Some of the short-term goals the Gov­ern­ment tried to meet such as re­lief for work­ing peo­ple in terms of salary re­lief grants. There are long-term goals that have been set out but those things take time, such as di­ver­si­fy­ing the econ­o­my. The Prime Min­is­ter said no one must be left be­hind but some peo­ple were left be­hind. Many stu­dents have prob­lems with on­line ed­u­ca­tion as they still don’t have lap­tops or the in­ter­net,” he said.

Hen­ry said the labour move­ment made a “huge con­tri­bu­tion” to NTAC but their pro­pos­als and rec­om­men­da­tions were not tak­en in­to ac­count by the Gov­ern­ment.

“Labour felt we were not tak­en se­ri­ous­ly in terms of the work we put in and the com­pro­mise we made. It’s not easy for a tri­par­tite body to do cer­tain things as we all have dif­fer­ent ide­olo­gies,” he said.

“We worked dili­gent­ly to close all the gaps at all lev­els. The prob­lem is that the work went to Cab­i­net and it nev­er reached Par­lia­ment. There was al­ways a bot­tle­neck as Min­is­ter Im­bert didn’t want to at­tend the meet­ings and did not want to re­spond to things we raised. We did a lot of work on the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act, the Sev­er­ance Ben­e­fits Act and the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Act.”

He com­plained about the “dis­re­spect” of the Gov­ern­ment mak­ing promis­es not to re­trench work­ers with­out dis­cus­sions at the tri­par­tite lev­el but re­neged on this. Some ne­go­ti­a­tions with unions were com­plet­ed yet em­ploy­ers did not meet these com­mit­ments.

All of this added to their de­ci­sion to leave NTAC, Hen­ry said.

Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC) sec­re­tary-gen­er­al Michael An­nisette said “noth­ing sub­stan­tial” was achieved from the Roadmap doc­u­ment as Gov­ern­ment has made no progress in set­tling wages in state-owned com­pa­nies or oth­er is­sues like amend­ments to labour leg­is­la­tion.

An­nisette said the labour move­ment will on­ly re­turn to NTAC when the Gov­ern­ment demon­strates that it is tak­ing trade unions se­ri­ous­ly.

On the is­sue of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, he said that prob­lem pre­ced­ed the pan­dem­ic and he blamed the Gov­ern­ment for set­ting a bad ex­am­ple.

“Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is about giv­ing work­ers the nec­es­sary tools and hold­ing peo­ple ac­count­able for the jobs they do. When you have the ex­am­ple of giv­ing a min­is­ter who nev­er ran a par­lour the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to run a mil­lion-dol­lar min­istry, what kind of ex­am­ple is that?

“Giv­ing peo­ple jobs be­cause they are from a po­lit­i­cal par­ty rather than their skills, how can a coun­try de­vel­op?” An­nisette asked.

He said the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion had spo­ken about set­ting a pol­i­cy for work­ing from home since 2020, but no steps have been tak­en.  his is an ex­am­ple of “no pro­duc­tiv­i­ty from the Gov­ern­ment,” he added.

On the is­sue of vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy, An­nisette said the labour move­ment will pro­tect work­ers.

“NATUC’s po­si­tion is clear, it is in­hu­mane and crim­i­nal to force a work­er to vac­ci­nate, giv­en the re­al­i­ty that these drugs are new and they are on tri­al. Your body is your per­son­al prop­er­ty and no one can force you to put some­thing in­to your body that you don’t want,” he said.

Com­ment­ing on KFC’s in­cen­tives to get work­ers to vac­ci­nate, he said: “If a work­er is vac­ci­nat­ed, there is no guar­an­tee that a cus­tomer who is a car­ri­er can’t al­so spread it in their restau­rants.”