Dear Editor,
Hardly any mention is made of 2019 being one hundred years since Hubert Critchlow founded the first Labour Union in the then British Empire, outside of Britain itself – The British Guiana Labour Union.
I could not help this recollection while re-reading the Guyana Review’s interesting conversation with prominent Trade Unionist Lincoln Lewis, in the Stabroek News of Thursday 28 November 2019.
Regarding the effectiveness of today’s trade union representation, Mr. Lewis remarked on the long persistent politicisation of unions – leading to their becoming compromised. An example of this has been evidenced in the sugar industry.
Contrastingly, is the valid description of respective political Administrations’ virtual indifference to the persistent plight of bauxite workers who are resolutely in a foreign culture that does not tolerate organised worker representation.
What emerges is a schizophrenic mindset that supports not only worker representation, but more collaboratively ‘Worker Participation’ in the sugar industry; while at the same time profoundly ignoring the denial of basic constitutional rights of workers in the bauxite industry.
In the latter instance, it is more than a matter of industrial relations. The negative management environment speaks to the depletion of the human spirit, the reduction in morale which is transmitted to compliant families, amongst whom are young generations who need desperately to learn about being respected.
But as Lincoln Lewis observes, with but too few exceptions, the local Private Sector is hardly a positive model of entertainers of employee organisations. So that they lack whatever moral authority is needed to be assertive about the plight of workers say, at the Linden Camp.
Contained in their self–interest, one wonders how much they measure the example set by the well-publicised success of Demerara Distillers Ltd whose management proactively negotiates employees’ conditions of employment, actually with two unions.
The interviewee showed at least a certain sensitivity in discussing the perceptible non–relationship of the publisher with employee representation in situ.
And while one agrees with the admission of the reported gap between union leaders and workers, one could not help but reflect on the disconnection between the TUC and FITUG
When we consider the substantial influx of foreign employers into this country who have none or little experience with the concept and practice of industrial relations, the question to be asked are what plans (not just discussions) would there be on which the reported optimism for the future can be based, particularly having reconciled to the reality that our local private sector is not unlikely to embrace their foreign counterparts.
It is therefore a matter of urgency for a forum to be organised at which all trades union representatives and the Administration sit down to create a relevant strategic plan which, amongst other things, will commit to:
i) Requiring the declaration of employment policies of employers (local and foreign)
ii) Establishing a highly competent representative team of employers and unions to draft procedures for monitoring infringements.
iii) Identifying relevant training and developmental programmes (local and overseas) for prospective local Labour Inspectors/Advisors.
iv) Since the Administration must be involved, the latter must be persuaded to issue a charter on Human Resources Management and Development as it relates to future economic and cultural environment.
Apart from the above, emerging from the conversation was the predicament, however nuanced, of the extent to which employees trusted union leaders.
Arguably, one observable example involves the Public Service Union whose record of electing executives may be worthy of examination
Quite irrelevantly perhaps, I recall my old employer insisting on the philosophy that ‘People are more important than ships, shops and sugar estates (read bauxite, oil and gas).
On a more personal level he once chided me for confusing ‘industrial relations’ with ‘human relations’.
Yours faithfully,
E.B.John
