WE SHOULD ALL TAKE ISSUE with these capitalists, local and multinational, who are exploiting Barbadians, especially women.
The scenario is a young woman who has many skills, including a first degree, but seeks additional employment. She attends an interview and gains an internship for a three-month period.
Her salary is $2 000 a month, with work hours from 9 until 5, but these can be extended until 6:30 depending on the exigencies of the bosses.
Essentially she is performing two jobs, as there is no secretary. She types letters, in addition to doing accounts and HR duties as they are assigned by top management. All the while she is congratulated for her fine work and work ethic.
This three-month internship ends and this young lady is offered another contract, but on the same onerous terms, with no concomitant increase in salary. This time a clause in the contract states that if she leaves this multinational entity, she cannot transfer her labour to a similar entity or competitor.
When a young woman, even more so one who has dependents, is paid these sorts of wages, she has to seek other forms of income, and $500 is way above the mean wage for many Barbadian workers. It is women who take most of the low-end jobs. Men prefer to go on the block or wield a weed wacker.
Capitalists and more so the multinationals reap the sweets. They can grant top management bonuses, and in the case of foreign corporations, expensive villas, company cars and fat salaries, but when it comes around to lower paid workers, in particular front-end workers, “things tight”.
It is a type of spinelessness operation. A spectre of long hours, low wages, hard work, and a callous opposition to workers joining trade unions. This is in the backdrop of many firms making healthy profits and not even granting the wealth creators a bonus.
The cost of living in Barbados is high for several reasons and there is a lot of graft and greed, more so a lot of money is here to be made, a fact which many have discovered and are exploiting. There is no minimum wage and women are the main victims.
Kudos to those capitalists who treat their workers well, and this is not in the form of only creating a corporate image, but liveable wages.
In the 1970s there was a convention on worker participation in the enterprise. This was one of the main themes of the International Labour Organisation, but it was seemingly an intellectual exercise and the annual trip by top civil servants to Geneva.
Any capitalist who allows his workers to share in the profits and with organisational growth, the ownership of his business is on the right path. Thatcher and Reagan delivered serious blows to organised labour.
It is a foregone conclusion that this form of capitalism is going to crash. All signs point to the demise of this system and its ugly buttress, the global financial system, with the exploitation, manipulation, even coercion, especially in Third World countries and corruption, along with the collusion with some governments to create usually low-paying jobs.
When in the mighty United States, one has to hold three jobs to survive, especially Blacks, yet that giant Walmart, one of the, if not the largest global corporations, has problems with paying a minimum wage, this adds weight to the demise of the modern capitalist system.
– PHILIP HUNTE