FOLLOWING THE national strikes by the National Union of Public Workers (NUPW) earlier in 2015 and the subsequent heightening of industrial action by labour unions in general, one of the response of state managers in Barbados has been to actively pursue the negation of trade unionism.
This was seen clearly in an August 26 panel discussion organised by the ruling Democratic Labour Party under the theme An Evolving Industrial Relations Climate In Barbados: The Way Forward, during which Robert “Bobby” Morris and Akhentoolove Corbin carried different versions of an anti-union message.
Morris, in a typically opportunistic and partisan approach, and reflective of the accustomed authoritarian Caribbean leadership, declared that national strikes were tantamount to civil war. He therefore spoke of the need to “look at that public sector to see what needs to be done in order that it does not become a problem and a burden in terms of the maintenance of peace in Barbados”.
Relatedly, Corbin, though far more circumspect than Morris, suggested that teachers’ unions in particular should “now focus on their concern for the education system, the teaching methodologies . . . . Unions need to evolve beyond just negotiating conflict to be part of the development process”.
Despite their differences in emphasis, their common aim was to transform the union into something other than a labour representative organisation. Coming in a context where the Barbados Government has adopted a largely International Monetary Fund-driven neo-liberal agenda, at the centre of which is the reversal of the social benefits of working people, and the creation of a context conducive to private capital accumulation, while abandoning the poor, these anti-union perspectives can only be understood as a process of ideological legitimation of the Government’s acknowledged capitulation to neo-liberal demands for the abandonment of the inherited social-democratic traditions.
All of this points to the compromised nature of unions which are insistent on maintaining links with political parties and governments, in a context where governments have been hollowed out by their conformity to externally imposed neo-liberalism. In such a context, governments have become nothing but vehicles for neo-liberal adjustment.
As a result of this, it is important that the trade union movement reassess the historical “political unionism” which had placed trade unions at the centre of the post-colonial Independence project, and had given the state its social democratic character.
Whilst much of the historical Caribbean tradition of political unionism has been crucial in ensuring the social democratic character of the state, our unions must come to the urgent realisation that to retain links as junior partners with political parties in the context of neo-liberalism is to compromise their ability to serve their members.
The Caribbean labour movement was in the vanguard of the Independence movement. In this moment of crisis, the movement should retake its role as vanguard and advance the social democratic character of the state.
• Tennyson Joseph is a political scientist at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, specialising in regional affairs. Email tjoe2008@live.com.