Labour laws need modernising, says private sector head

Chairman of the Barbados Private Sector Association (BPSA) Trisha Tannis has called for updated labour legislation to address the challenges of a 2022 workforce.

She said despite the country going through a pandemic for the past two years, labour laws are no more flexible now than they were before COVID-19 raised its head here in 2020.

In fact, she described some of the legislation as “archaic”.

“We still do have some archaic and oppressive practices in 2022. The issue, though, in terms of scope and resilience and relevance, is are we actually still protecting our employees with the existing legislation, or is the legislation itself being used to promote further oppression because we are now becoming very holistic in our industrial relationships as opposed to a bit more of a relationship that is guided by principles?” Tannis said on Wednesday during a panel discussion hosted by the Barbados Employers’ Confederation (BEC) entitled Labour Legislation and Business: Are We on Opposite Sides?

“I think, generally speaking, we can’t say it’s not facilitative but the issue is to what degree. I don’t believe, however, that it is completely flexible as it relates to promoting sustainable business practices. I think it is a bit punitive in some cases against businesses and it does not accommodate some current and future modalities of work – for example, work from home.

“I think, sadly, despite the preponderance of labour legislation, I don’t know that our resilience is any higher than it was in March 2020. I don’t know that we are any more flexible than we were in March 2020,” Tannis added.

She said the current approach, while it may have been appropriate for traditional labour and industry relations, it “is not fit for what is emerging in terms of the other trends”.

Attorney-at-law and deputy chairman of the Employment Rights Tribunal Omari Drakes agreed that some of the current labour legislation needed updating.

“Law is a very fluid thing so what applies today does not necessarily apply tomorrow…. So if we were today to use what we knew in 2020 as the framework for what we are doing in 2022, we would still be wrong because a lot has happened in those two years.

“So, it can’t be that we are so focused on the law as it stands. It has to be a process where we can keep getting information out and to the powers that are making the decisions so that we can progress with the times,” Drakes said.

While acknowledging the flaws in legislation, Drakes contended that employers were not making full use of “all of the tools in their arsenal”. (RB)