WITH A BACKGROUND of nearly 50 years – 20 full time – in industrial relations, Elsworth Young believes the ongoing Alexandra impasse has shown the need for a public sector arrangement similar to what obtains in the private sector, where a document sets out standards for solving disputes between unions and employers.
The retired Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Labour and former Chief Labour Officer was also head of industrial relations at the CARICOM Secretariat, and currently lectures part-time in industrial relations at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill. Young spoke to Associate Editor Ricky Jordan.
Mr Young, start by putting this dispute in context for us and painting a picture of where we are in terms of industrial disputes settlement.
YOUNG: Well, one has to return to history. The history of the Caribbean is rooted in slavery and colonialism, which bequeathed a legacy of a master-servant-type relationship. So we’ve always had this adversarial relationship between the owners/managers of industry and the people who worked for wages after Emancipation in 1838.
We also had riots in the Caribbean in the 1930s because colonialism had brought about very little positive change, and 100 years after Emancipation there was very little improvement in terms of democratic, political or economic rights.
So are you satisfied with how far we’ve come as a country in terms of industrial relations and is there still room today for the trade union movement?
YOUNG: We have made tremendous changes since the 1930s but because of globalization, the quality of the struggle has changed. Globalization, with its imperative of competitiveness, now puts a premium on conflict at the workplace, because unions and employers have to work together to achieve competitiveness and productivity. So, there is still room for trade unions but the role will change.
What does this mean for the current dispute at Alexandra?
YOUNG: That, to my mind, is a special case because it draws attention to the whole question of industrial relations in the public sector which, I must say, has not reflected the same degree of modernization as exists in the private sector.
The major union, the Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU), enters into agreements between itself and employers arising from bargaining. In the traditional civil service, that is to say between Government as an employer and its employees in ministries, departments, schools and so on, there’s no such arrangement. We have discussions on wages, but in terms of a document that sets out the rights and obligations of the parties and the procedures for settling disputes, I think that needs to be looked at and modernized.
At the moment, you have to look to the Public Service Act and . . . that is at the heart of the problem now between the principal of Alexandra School and the Barbados Secondary Teachers’ Union (BSTU). We assume that, between the executives whom we hire to provide services for the Government and the organizations [unions] that represent their support staff, there will always be a cordial relationship permitting speedy and orderly resolution to disputes that arise. But, as we say, tongue and teet’ does have noise, so the same thing exists between employees and their representatives, and employers and their representatives.
We have not upgraded the industrial relations practices and arrangements in Government to bring them in line with the private sector to ensure that there is provision for orderly discussion and resolution of disputes, and that’s part of the problem there. There’s nothing written down!
So do you think the Alexandra case would have been easily remedied if there were written rules?
YOUNG: I think industrial relations is too complex to have to rely on good sense, common sense and cordial relationships between the leader and the union representing the support staff to ensure speedy resolution.
And one of the positives that will probably arise from this issue when it is resolved is that it will help to highlight the importance of recruiting and choosing the best persons to lead organisations. There’s no guarantee that an individual who is technically capable possesses the human relations skills that will create harmony.
In fact, if a general has fallen out with his troops and then goes into battle and there’s no trust between them, what is the likely outcome?
When I worked at the Labour Department, there was a case among employees at Tansitor. The relationship between the then CEO and the employees had broken down, as well as the relationship between him and the BWU.
The parent company then transferred the CEO to another company overseas and replaced him with someone skilled in human resource management. It changed the situation dramatically! So we may have to pay closer attention to training persons for higher office in order to minimize the conflict that will inevitably arise.
So you are saying that the same remedy can be applied at Alexandra?
YOUNG: Our traditional industrial relations system has operated on the notion that the unions and employers should be left alone to resolve their differences and only go outside if they can’t solve them. The State only gets involved if the two sides can’t agree. But I believe the time has come for us to look at the industrial relations system in the public sector and try to arrive at a more formal set of arrangements and procedures to guide the behaviour of the parties, otherwise problems like this will recur. In other words, industrial relations has not been given the priority attention or importance like technology management, marketing and information management.
That is why the question you asked first is so important, in terms of where we are now in terms of ensuring harmony in the workplace. We have not done enough because, had we done so, this dispute would not have reached this stage. There is a lesson to be learnt from this impasse – the priority of paying more attention to changing the skills set of persons in the Ministry of Education and other Government agencies to equip them to deal with these issues that arise in the schools and other departments.
Will the industrial relations sector be richer for this experience then?
YOUNG: It’s an unfortunate situation but sometimes it takes an incident like this to bring to the fore the real causes, to dramatize the importance of Government and its representatives working out mechanisms and practices to prevent these issues. It hurts but all of us have to take responsibility for ensuring that in this 21st century we have a better system for managing relations between employers, be it Government or be it private sector employer, or even the Church, because we know what happened years ago in the Anglican Church in relation to Father Gatherer.
People don’t go on strike capriciously; the strike weapon is the most extreme form of industrial action and research has shown that unions resort to those methods when all other avenues have failed. I’m not saying that in this case consultation and communication might not have led to a solution but one hand cannot clap.
In hindsight has it gone on for too long?
YOUNG: You don’t dilly-dally and procrastinate in dealing with industrial disputes. We have allowed it to get out of hand. The horse is out of the stable, because we didn’t have the mechanism in place to keep the horse in there.
To my mind, it has gone past the stage where you can negotiate a settlement.
The union has made a very strong and strident demand which leaves very little room for manoeuvre. It is a serious fracture that might require surgery one way or another in order to deal with the immediate problem. At Tansitor the situation changed dramatically when the CEO was changed, and I’m saying that at Alexandra that can also be replicated.
I don’t have all the information but surely I expect the BSTU will have data that would have induced it into taking its position. And you have on the other side a leader like Mr Broomes who has said he would make the same comments about the senior teacher again.
One has to be careful here because you would need to see the paper trail and evidence that could lead to a determination as to whether a teacher wilfully disobeyed a reasonable and lawful order from the designated boss.
There’s provision for discipline in such cases in the Public Service Act. I don’t know if this was done. Did Mr Broomes actually submit a formal complaint or counsel the teacher and try to show her why she had to carry out a reasonable order? There are other levels available for anyone seeking to report an officer for misconduct instead of making a judgement call to go the route that he did, which is what was unfortunate.
One of the cardinal rules of effective leadership is not to shoot your colleagues down in public because, remember, you have to rely on them to do things for you which you can’t do for yourself.
What, therefore, are the options in the Alexandra impasse?
YOUNG: One, you can do nothing which is reprehensible because the problem would remain to the detriment of everyone, especially the children.
Two, the principal can be separated from Alexandra and offered a position at a senior or higher level elsewhere in the system, but he would have to accept that promotion. Three, he can be pensioned off due to the exigencies of the service where Government reasons that it’s necessary in the interest of resolution to remove him from the school through the instrumentality of the Pension Act.
A fourth and probably far-fetched proposal might be to move the teachers out, and you can see how complex it would be, especially if some of them have been appointed to the school, as I understand Mr Broomes has been. Consequently, any relocation of them would entail interference with their contracts of employment and the conclusion that they might have been constructively dismissed, and this would necessitate pensioning them off too. The ultimate or more desirable solution would be a negotiation between the two sides, which would call for a miracle.
What about the option of going to an industrial court?
YOUNG: You’ve raised an interesting question: Has that system that has served us well from the time unions were given legitimacy in the 1940s outlived its usefulness? And have we moved to a point where, as Dr Leonard Shorey has said, you need an industrial court? There is a downside to having an industrial court: it can inhibit the tendency by the parties to sit down and resolve differences themselves. So I would only go that route if a situation had deteriorated to a stage where there was an outbreak of nationwide strikes and disruptions.
