Barbadian workers engaged in non-standard forms of employment who currently find themselves outside the National Insurance and Social Security Service net are being targeted for coverage under the island’s social security system.
The National Portable Benefits Framework, outlined in a resolution passed in the House of Assembly recently, is designed to ensure that those workers who “contribute labour, value and productivity to the development of Barbados, yet remain exposed to insecurity, can enjoy social security protection”.
Leading off debate on the resolution, MP for St George North and general secretary of the Barbados Workers’ Union, Toni Moore, noted that too often, social protection was treated as attaching to a job title or contractural label, rather than to the worker as a person. The fundamental tenet of the framework is the principle that social security must follow the employer and not the job, hence contributions must accumulate according to the number of jobs done by the worker over his years of work engagement.
Moore said the resolution which the House was being asked to support was a portable benefits framework, anchored in the National Insurance and Social Security Service (NISSS), and would require “every employer, contractor, platform agency, engager or other beneficiary of labour to make contributions on behalf of every worker for the duration of that engagement to ensure continuity of protection, regardless of the form or length of work”.
The resolution also calls for the supporting administrative, technological and enforcement measures necessary to ensure that the framework is effective, equitable and accessible.
Moore said the idea that social security must follow the job and not the worker was based on
the stated view that as more and more employees moved towards multiple engagements, the
21 hours a week that must be worked so that contributions can be paid in on behalf of the worker no longer existed.
“I think what we speak of very often is the fact that we have so many workers in contract positions, but what people in Barbados don’t pay attention to is the fact that equally we have so many workers in no-contract positions . . . where from day to day you don’t know what hours you are working, how many hours you are working, if you are working or otherwise.”
Referring to St Michael South MP Kirk Humphrey’s contribution to the debate, Moore said whether the workers were “gig workers, freelancers in the media that we often take for granted what they are doing and the conditions under which they work, often in conditions where they are chasing stories with no fixed hours, no regular hours, may mean some of them don’t have access to the very protection that has been on the discussion in this Chamber for the past two months . . . they are all instrumental in building our economy but too often they are not building protection for themselves”.
The Private Members’ Resolution had been under discussion before being formally brought
to the House recently.
Moore said: “Over the last two months, in the sessions where it was debated . . . we have argued to show how the old model is broken; we have supported our arguments with the facts that the [NISSS] cannot survive if 30 per cent of the workers . . . remained in informality and where fewer than
20 per cent of them at the time were contributing to self-employment.” (GC)
