#BTEditorial – May Day for the Barbadian worker

When the Right Excellent Sir Grantley Adams, the Right Excellent Sir Hugh Springer, the Right Excellent Sir Frank Walcott, Sir Mencea Cox, Sir MacDonald Blunt and others of this band of revolutionary brothers were fighting for the cause of workers’ rights in this country from the late 1930s and early 1940s, they knew it was going to be an uphill and often dangerous battle. For the mercantile and planter classes had no intention of conceding power to the powerless masses. Not without a fight.

From their efforts, the descendants of working-class Barbadians enjoy the right to organise and join a trade union, maternity benefits, vacation pay, the right to strike and peacefully protest, workmen’s compensation, and minimum wages for shop assistants. Among the most significant benefits, these men of valour secured were the formation of the National Insurance Scheme in 1967 with its life-saving unemployment benefits and severance payments.

We owe so much to these early titans who had the foresight to form the Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU) in 1941. Their successors, Sir Roy Trotman and the latest leader of this great institution, Senator Toni Moore, continue to walk in their footsteps. Senator Moore’s mettle, we are sure, will be tested over the next year or more, as the union responds to the COVID-19 crisis and its devastating impact on individuals, homes and livelihoods.

Senator Moore, we are certain, has no delusions about the enormity of the economic and social onslaught the disease has brought to this country.

The BWU has not publicly addressed its own ability to continue to pay salaries of its dedicated and committed officers who are on the frontline of the fight for workers’ rights. We can only imagine that unless the BWU has a wealth of reserves somewhere, it, too, must be struggling. The fact that thousands of workers will not be in a position to pay union dues and contribute to the upkeep of this trade union, will bring the struggle to survive up front and centre for this august institution.

As we prepare to celebrate May Day, or Labour Day, as some refer to it, we certainly do not diminish the role of other workers’ representatives. But the contribution of the BWU and its various leaders in securing the fundamental rights of workers in this country can never be understated. Unfortunately, the BWU does not devote enough time and effort to reinforcing the interconnection between the rights we enjoy and the union’s role in securing them.

These days, too many employees associate May 1 with a good jump-up, a day to go to the beach, or sadly, just another day off.

Somehow, we are convinced, though, that May Day 2020 will be one for the record books. There will be no fun and frolic. It will mark the day that more than 29,000 Barbadians were staying at home, not because the Government told them to but because their former employer told them to. And the number keeps growing as they call on the NIS for assistance because of job loss. It will be the May Day when thousands of workers across the world would have lost their lives due to COVID-19. May Day 2020 will be one in which employers and employees are equally concerned about their future. It will be one year that an entire division of the BWU, its very strong Hotel Division, has been decimated as 95 per cent of all hotels are closed. It will be the May Day after Central Bank of Barbados Governor Cleviston Haynes would have confirmed what many of us already know. We are in deep trouble.

For the political, business, labour and NGO leaders, it is also a May Day for all to join forces to save Team Barbados. This is a May Day that no side is in any more position of power than the other. Without ordinary workers being able to go to jobs and earn a living, businesses have no cash flow and will fail. Workers need employers and businesses need workers in their jobs. And most important, our political leadership requires a fully functioning and stable society and economy in which to build and thrive.

We believe that this may yet be a May Day to remember, for all the very best reasons. Cometh the crisis, cometh the opportunity.