The reported comments from the lead International Monetary Fund (IMF) representative to Barbados suggesting that the pace of adjustment must be heightened should by now have signalled to all concerned that the ultimate authority guiding economic management of Barbados resides not in Bridgetown, but in Washington.
This realisation should provide sobering lessons to the Barbados trade union movement, which has thus far conducted its approach to the crisis with its eyes and hearts fixed on the internal politics of Barbados, as if this was the beginning and end of the issue.
Let us be frank. The actors in the Barbadian trade union movement are subjective beings, who would have had their own historical connections to the political parties and the political class of Barbados. The politics of Barbados between 1994 and 2013 would have presented issues, events, ideas, policies, programmes and personalities which no doubt have shaped the perspectives of the leadership of the labour movement today.
This is not to suggest that the movement or its leadership is monolithic. The claim here, instead, is that its collective position and assessment of contemporary issues gives the trade union movement the character of a “historic bloc” acting in concert, whether or not it is conscious of itself as such. There is clear evidence of a collective stance on the part of the unions, of a preference in the 2013 election as there is today on the issue of the approach to the ongoing austerity, despite the external appearance of internal disunity.
It is in such a context that a fundamental rethinking of the union’s approach is being proposed, given the evidence of externally motivated impulses behind the austerity. For example, instead of publicly disavowing strike action with the dismissive “what are we striking for?”, wouldn’t a far more progressive and intelligent response have been that “we are leaving all options open”? Whilst the first approach gives comfort to employers and places the union in opposition to its membership, the second provides flexibility of action, especially where new issues may dictate a new direction. Only a closed-minded, partisan and hardened identification with Government would push a union to remove the strike as an option in the face of massive retrenchment. Why strike? Try solidarity, as a short answer. Indeed, it can be easily argued that the movement’s overwhelming faith in the Government has been betrayed with each lay-off.
However, the overt belligerence of the IMF has opened a window for the union to distance itself from its earlier close identification with power, and to reclaim its anti-imperialist consciousness as a way out of its partisan trap. Such a stance would free the unions to reclaim their right to defend workers and to overcome their fatal infatuation with local power. Failing this, the unions will find themselves on the wrong side of history.
Tennyson Joseph is a political scientist at the University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus, specializing in regional affairs. Email tjoe2008@live.com.