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Sunday, May 4, 2025

Trade union membership declining

Labour Min­is­ter: Their fo­cus needs to change

by

1548 days ago
20210206
FILE PHOTO: OWTU members protesting outside the Petrotrin Pointe-a-Pierre refinery.

FILE PHOTO: OWTU members protesting outside the Petrotrin Pointe-a-Pierre refinery.

KRISTIAN DE SILVA

Raphael John-Lall

raphael.lall@guardian.co.tt

T&T’s unionised work­force fell from a high of 40 per cent in the 1980s to rough­ly 18 per cent in 2021.

Vet­er­an trade union­ist Ce­cil Paul, who gave the Sun­day Guardian these es­ti­mates, at­trib­ut­es this dras­tic re­duc­tion to struc­tur­al changes in the econ­o­my over the last 30 years.

Dur­ing the 1970s, the so­cial­ist ide­ol­o­gy which was pop­u­lar at that time con­vinced many that the state should man­age the “com­mand­ing heights of the econ­o­my.” The new­ly na­tion­alised in­dus­tries of that era in bank­ing, wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty and oth­ers had strong trade union mem­ber­ship.

Times have changed and the doc­trine now around the world en­cour­ages state-run in­dus­tries to be pri­va­tised and most of the times, trade unions are dec­i­mat­ed as col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing is re­placed with in­di­vid­ual con­tracts.

T&T work­ers are still unionised in a few ma­jor in­dus­tries like oil, elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter but over the last three years, those key sec­tors like heavy in­dus­tries, oil, oth­er en­er­gy com­pa­nies and ma­jor man­u­fac­tur­ing have re­duced their work­force.

Re­cent ex­am­ples in­clude Unilever send­ing home over 200 work­ers in 2019 and the clo­sure of Petrotrin re­sult­ing in thou­sands of jobs be­ing lost.

T&T is not the on­ly coun­try that has seen trade unions lose mem­ber­ship as it is a world­wide trend.

Ac­cord­ing to the US Bu­reau of Labour sta­tis­tics in 1983, 20 per cent of the Amer­i­can work­force was unionised. By 2019 the mem­ber­ship plum­met­ed to 10 per cent.

De­bates have raged over the years about if trade unions will dis­ap­pear and what unions can do sur­vive.

Should unions own busi­ness­es? The most re­cent ex­am­ple is the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union-owned Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed’s at­tempt to ac­quire the for­mer Petrotrin re­fin­ery.

Should trade union­ists move on to par­ty pol­i­tics and use it as a new plat­form to fight for bet­ter work­ing con­di­tions for work­ing-class peo­ple? The most promi­nent ex­am­ple is for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day who was a for­mer leader of the All Trinidad Sug­ar and Gen­er­al Work­ers’ Trade Union.

The Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) held a mo­tor­cade from San Fer­nan­do to Port-of-Spain in Jan­u­ary in which JTUM Pres­i­dent said the in­dus­tri­al cli­mate is wors­en­ing in T&T and this has to be a turn­ing point for the coun­try’s trade unions.

Sev­er­al in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions ex­perts and for­mer trade union lead­ers spoke to the Guardian and weighed in on the de­bate.

Trade union func­tions

Lesmore Fred­er­ick, in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions spe­cial­ist and a lec­tur­er at the Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness, list­ed a num­ber of func­tions of trade unions which in­clude col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing and max­imis­ing terms and con­di­tions of mem­bers.

Unions al­so have an eco­nom­ic func­tion which in­volves en­sur­ing that work­ers’ wages are ad­e­quate so that they can con­tribute to the work­place and the prof­its of the busi­ness which would re­sult in its sur­vival.

Rudy In­dars­ingh, UNC MP and for­mer All Trinidad Sug­ar and Gen­er­al Work­ers’ Union leader de­scribes unions’ ba­sic role as seek­ing bet­ter terms and con­di­tions of mem­bers. This should not on­ly be about mon­ey but in­clude train­ing of work­ers, bet­ter health­care, hous­ing among oth­er needs of work­ers.

Joseph Re­my, Pres­i­dent of the Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Trade Union (FI­TUN) said the ba­sic func­tion of a trade union should be de­fend­ing the rights of work­ers such as col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing, han­dling all In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions is­sues like griev­ances and dis­putes and rep­re­sent­ing the af­fairs of the work­ing class on the job site and in the com­mu­ni­ty.

Labour and pol­i­tics

Fred­er­ick be­lieves that par­ty pol­i­tics is sim­ply an ex­ten­sion of work­place pol­i­tics and it is nat­ur­al for trade union­ists to en­ter the realm of pol­i­tics.

Trade union­ists en­ter­ing pol­i­tics is not just a lo­cal phe­nom­e­non but is wide­spread in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. The British Labour Par­ty is the nat­ur­al al­ly of the British trade union move­ment.

Even lo­cal­ly, trade unions have court­ed dif­fer­ent gov­ern­ments. He used the ex­am­ple of The Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) short­lived in­volve­ment with the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment. For­mer OW­TU leader, Er­rol McLeod be­came that Gov­ern­ment’s Labour Min­is­ter.

McLeod was the found­ing leader of the MSJ when he won the seat in 2010. At that time, the MSJ jus­ti­fied their en­try in­to pol­i­tics as want­i­ng to give work­ing-class peo­ple a voice in na­tion­al pol­i­tics. The re­la­tion­ship soon soured over is­sues of cor­rup­tion and the MSJ, then part of the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship coali­tion pulled out of the coali­tion in 2012 and dis­tanced it­self from McLeod.

Whether or not it was a suc­cess­ful re­la­tion­ship, Fred­er­ick said the unions at that time saw it nec­es­sary to get in­volved to in­flu­ence the po­lit­i­cal econ­o­my.

In 2010, For­mer Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) Pres­i­dent, Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus pub­licly an­nounced that she joined the PNM. When the PNM won the elec­tions in 2015, they con­tin­ued the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship tra­di­tion of ap­point­ing a for­mer labour leader as Labour Min­is­ter.

By then the OW­TU had long dis­tanced them­selves for the UNC and be­fore the 2015 elec­tions, JTUM signed an MOU with the PNM to work to­geth­er on is­sues af­fect­ing the coun­try.

Bap­tiste-Primus told the Guardian that the trade union move­ment has al­ways been in­ter­locked with pol­i­tics and trade union­ists end­ing par­ty pol­i­tics is noth­ing new.

She ad­vised trade union lead­ers who get in­to par­ty pol­i­tics to sep­a­rate pol­i­tics from their trade union ac­tiv­i­ties as labour lead­ers “can­not serve two mas­ters at once.”

In­dars­ingh al­so sup­ports the view that it is the right of trade union lead­ers to as­pire to the high­est po­lit­i­cal of­fices of the land.

Re­my point­ed out that it was the labour move­ment in the 1930s and events sur­round­ing 1937 that laid the foun­da­tion for the right to vote for all cit­i­zens. In this way, trade union ac­tivism was al­ways linked to pol­i­tics.

He gave ex­am­ples of po­lit­i­cal par­ties that are tied to trade unions across the Caribbean and these in­clude Bar­ba­dos Labour Par­ty and Unit­ed Labour Par­ty in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines.

He ar­gues that to change the eco­nom­ic and so­cial con­di­tions of work­ers, this usu­al­ly has to be done at the po­lit­i­cal lev­el.

Fred­er­ick be­lieves that trade unions too can be “mod­el en­tre­pre­neurs” and Pa­tri­ot­ic’s at­tempt to buy the re­fin­ery is an ex­am­ple of that.

In­dars­ingh agreed by say­ing that union lead­ers must be in­no­v­a­tive and come up with new ways of gen­er­at­ing in­come for their mem­ber­ship. How­ev­er, he said that union lead­ers must prac­tise what they preach and must be trans­par­ent when spend­ing and in­vest­ing work­ers’ mon­ey.

Re­my said man­ag­ing a trade union is es­sen­tial­ly run­ning a busi­ness and that qual­i­fies them get­ting in­to oth­er types of busi­ness­es.

Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty

While there are con­cerns about lev­els of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in T&T’s work­places and in­dus­try Fred­er­ick said that busi­ness own­ers must pro­duce da­ta to show this.

He gave past ex­am­ples of “mod­el labour man­age­ment” re­la­tions such as Re­pub­lic Bank and Bank­ing, In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers’ Union (BIG­WU), Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL) and OW­TU as ex­am­ples of man­age­ment and labour work­ing to­geth­er to in­crease pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

In gen­er­al, work­ers will give an out­put that is con­sis­tent with the wages they re­ceive. If they re­ceive low wages, their pro­duc­tiv­i­ty will not be high.

In­dars­ingh be­lieves that busi­ness own­ers must en­sure that work­ers raise their out­put. Af­ter all, it is the right of busi­ness own­ers to man­age.

Re­my ar­gues that work­ers can on­ly give their best in the work­place if they have a de­cent stan­dard of liv­ing.

Busi­ness own­ers must do more to mo­ti­vate their work­ers to pro­duce more thus gen­er­at­ing prof­its for the busi­ness.

Trade union sur­vival

Labour Min­is­ter Stephen Mc Clashie has tak­en the stance that unions are now more rel­e­vant than ever giv­en the changes in the eco­nom­ic and so­cial spheres over the last few decades.

“The unions are even more rel­e­vant now than in the past giv­en the rapid changes in the way work are done and the po­ten­tial for ex­ploita­tion. But maybe their fo­cus needs to change from be­ing ad­ver­sar­i­al to be­ing more con­sen­sus-dri­ven.”

On the is­sue of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, the Labour Min­is­ter stat­ed that pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is a com­plex is­sue where all stake­hold­ers must play their role.

“It’s a bal­anc­ing act as the unions world ar­gue that pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is high while busi­ness own­ers would ar­gue that it is low. There is an ac­cept­able lev­el of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty where both par­ties ben­e­fit. So I think that we need to get to that stage.

He con­clud­ed by stay­ing that di­a­logue is im­por­tant.

“We don’t have to be best friends as we see things from dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives. But I hope we come to the ta­ble in an am­a­teur way and deal with the is­sues that con­front us.”

Em­ploy­ees of Amer­i­can tech gi­ant Google re­cent­ly formed a union and Re­my used this as an ex­am­ple of peo­ple still be­liev­ing in the phi­los­o­phy of labour unions and what they stand for.

Re­my said a lot of the new jobs be­ing cre­at­ed in T&T are low pay­ing jobs in the in­for­mal sec­tor and these are dif­fi­cult to unionise. He added that the labour laws need to be mod­i­fied which would al­low or­ga­niz­ing work­ers much eas­i­er.

Bap­tiste-Primus al­so be­lieves that trade unions will al­ways have a fu­ture as “em­ploy­ers are not al­ways fair.”

How­ev­er, she added that trade unions must adapt to the chang­ing world and to the cur­rent COVID-19 era where many busi­ness­es are clos­ing their doors.

“No one in this coun­try knows how many busi­ness­es have fold­ed. I would ad­vise trade unions not to fo­cus on wage in­creas­es at this point but fo­cus on keep­ing their mem­bers in jobs. Half a loaf is bet­ter than none.”

In­dars­ingh is con­fi­dent that trade unions will sur­vive but rec­om­mends that unions mod­ernise how they con­duct their busi­ness­es.

The min­i­mum wage, the right to health­care, the right to hous­ing, the right to ed­u­ca­tion all came out of the strug­gles of the trade union move­ment of the 1930s.

Work­ers will al­ways need the right to have re­dress in the work­place, they will al­ways need to have col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing rights, they will al­ways need fair wages and if there are no trade unions to fight on their be­half then this could lead to so­cial up­heaval.

He ad­vised this cur­rent crop of union lead­ers to push for leg­isla­tive changes that would im­prove the lot of work­ers.


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