#BTEditorial – A labour landscape of unrest

General Secretary of the Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU) and newly-minted Member of Parliament for St George North Toni Moore, must be pleased with the outcome of the more than decade-old dispute with global security firm G4S.

Securing a quick settlement to the dispute that threatened to explode into an all-out national industrial relations debacle was more than necessary. It was really a no-win situation for any of the parties involved had the fracture devolved into a national confrontation.

Prime Minister Mia Mottley was less than subtle, laying all the options she might pursue to bring the security firm to human understanding. G4S, a global brand would have done untold damage to its reputation if it was viewed as an exploitative employer that was prepared to subvert our country’s labour laws.

But some may argue that while the BWU won the battle and secured an important victory for hundreds of men and women who work in the security services for minimum wage, the BWU is still in a fight for its own standing and relevance.

The fact remains, the BWU and MP Moore badly needed a win. The union has been losing the public relations battle to the upstart labour group – Unity Workers’ Union (UWU), led by firebrand industrial relations expert Senator Caswell Franklyn.

The Opposition Senator has claimed that his UWU has been nipping away at the membership of the traditional powerhouses in the labour movement. Members of the National Union of Public Workers (NUPW) and the BWU have been losing the confidence of some of their members over time.

There has been more than a whisper of discomfort about the alignment of the leadership of these two unions with the current administration. On the other hand, some members have shifted to Franklyn’s fold simply because they believe he is an authentic, believable defender of the small man and the disadvantaged.

The disaffected former BWU/NUPW members may believe when Franklyn is in a fight, he will take no prisoners and he will carry the battle to the most powerful, even the Prime Minister of Barbados, arguably, one of the most popular leaders this country has had.

So Mottley, Sir Roy Trotman, MP Moore, et al, saved the day, secured an important victory. But many questioned whether a national strike was real or was mere bluster.

Would the privileged few who have managed to maintain their jobs during this COVID-19 pandemic risk their livelihoods just weeks before the Christmas holidays to take to the streets in solidarity?

More important, would Barbados’ jittery private sector, still haemorrhaging from the pandemic-induced shock, be party to a national strike at this time? We highly doubt that.

After this victory, the BWU will certainly need to return to the drawing board to assess its place in the Barbados industrial landscape. We have no inside information and we do not require an audit to know that the BWU must be under significant financial stress, having lost much of its membership to dislocation and apathy. Its powerful Hotel Workers Division must have been decimated since the impact of COVID-19 in March of this year.

The union will also have to determine whether its leader’s subsumed presence in the ruling administration will redound to the benefit of labour. The jury is still out and time will tell.

At this juncture, it may be instructive to look back at our history and determine what nuggets of wisdom can be extracted.

Samuel J. Goolsarran in a 2006 International Labour Organisation (ILO) paper on industrial relations in the Caribbean wrote: “One of the main challenges that Caribbean countries are facing and will continue to face, is that of the need to adjust their economic and social systems, in view of the process of globalization.

“Such an adjustment has no doubt necessitated a change in the traditional ways of doing business. Already these changes are manifest in the form of business mergers, restructuring and downsizing of businesses, new forms of employment contracts, and outsourcing, with the resultant implications for employer-employee relations and industrial relations as a whole.”

What needs to be recognised is that the world has changed and the tradition of voluntarism in industrial relations where employers and unions regulate their own relations, has run its course.

We are more than convinced that our labour laws need to be strengthened and accompanied by a concomitant determination to rigorously enforce laws in the protection of workers, most of whom languish at the bottom of the economic, social and educational rung.