During any period of austerity, workers and their unions are bound to be very concerned about the impact on workers of those measures taken to alleviate whatever problems the country’s economy is facing.
If the measures taken affect a segment of the working population, more so than the entire population, then there is an even greater concern to ensure that no more than is necessary is extracted from that segment of workers so affected.
This is exactly the situation affecting the two major unions, the Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU) and the National Union of Public Workers (NUPW). The retrenchment of thousands of workers is not a matter which any union can take lightly, but when the national economy faces challenges of the most severe kind something has to give and compromises may have to be hammered out on the anvil of hard bargaining and deep-seated controversy.
Our historical industrial relations picture has been one of voluntarism in which both sides negotiate and discuss and arrive at settlements in which the national interest is always important and well respected.
Within recent times the picture appears to have changed. The unions seem to have become more aggressive in making sure that the workers’ cases are being put; and there are an increasing number of cases where the workers themselves have not been tardy in stopping work in order to send a strong signal to employers that grievances of serious significance have to be resolved.
Now both major unions have played seminal roles in the economic and social development in this country; but the current challenges to the unions and their workers are taking place in the unusual circumstance of austerity conditions following no wage increases for public workers, and small increases in the private sector during the last six years.
This picture would challenge any experienced union leader who has already won his or her spurs; but changes of union leadership are also taking place, with the BWU electing Toni Moore to succeed Sir Roy Trotman as general secretary. She seems from her first foray to have acquitted herself well. Leadership changes at the NUPW are also on the cards.
Especially in this heady mix, workers have a duty not to engage in undisciplined and wildcat behaviour. Employers, on the other hand, have a special duty in these times, indeed always, to ensure as far as possible that they take sensitive and timely decisions in consultation with the workers and their unions in safeguarding their business enterprises.
In difficult economic times both workers and business owners must always remember that both sides, so to speak, “eat from the same pot” and that survival of the business enterprise, with minimal job losses, in such difficult times must be the chief objective of both sides.
Of course, the role of Government is to preserve and foster the kind of environment in which business and workers can seek to maintain a healthy national economy with spin-off benefits at the personal level; but gains which have resulted from former struggles must not be lost through short-sighted objectives which do not focus on the larger picture when the going is rough.
We therefore urge everyone involved – workers, business and public sector interests alike – to work quickly to return equilibrium to the industrial relations scene. It is always when the ocean is at its most turbulent that everyone on board must safeguard the vessel, for by so doing one safeguards oneself.