THE ONGOING RIFT between the Barbados Workers’ Union and the umbrella trade union body is not good for the country and may indicate that those organizations are not seeing the bigger picture right now.
This is the view of executive director of the National Productivity Council, John Pilgrim, who told the DAILY NATION yesterday that unity was the key to taking the country out of its current economic mess.
Speaking after the council’s 20th anniversary service at Western Light Church of the Nazarene yesterday, Pilgrim said that “the disunity or little levels of disruption that exist right now [between the unions] are not good for the country because it means you’re taking your eyes off the ball and focusing on other issues that in truth and in fact are not relevant to the bigger issues which the country is faced with”.
He said the Congress of Trade Unions and Staff Associations of Barbados (CTUSAB), from which the BWU had seceded earlier this year, had been formed as an integral part of the Social Partnership in 1993 when serious economic challenges such as high inflation, 25 per cent unemployment, and a spate of industrial disputes rocked the country.
“To my mind the Social Partnership was one mechanism that helped to carry the country forward with a certain level of unity and focus on a common perspective. So I think we need to have that spirit of tripartism, collaboration again among all the partners without being distracted by issues happening within a particular unit, so to speak. We need to get back to basics and do things how we were doing them in the 1990s with a common objective of building the economy, expanding the economic pie and addressing the kinds of issues we have right now facing the country,” he stated.
Pilgrim, who along with Professor Andrew Downes were the two technical officers attached to the council when it was formed in 1993, said Barbadians had “taken their eyes off the ball” after being highly focused in the late 1990s.
“Now we need to put our eyes on the ball again because that’s one of the major solutions to help us address the problems that we’re in . . . . We need to get back out there and encourage companies to be more efficient, managers and supervisors to pay more attention to how they manage resources and motivate workers, and put incentives in place so that labour productivity can be obtained,” he said. (RJ)