The Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU) is looking to help in the revival of the Caribbean Congress of Labour (CCL) – the regional umbrella body for trade unions.
BWU general secretary Sir Roy Trotman reported this yesterday during a Press conference at the union’s Harmony Hall, St Michael headquarters.
“The (BWU) Council has instructed the incoming executive to see what ways may be possible in which the Barbados Workers’ Union may be able to invite our colleagues in Barbados and, indeed, colleagues elsewhere to support a resuscitation and a revival of the CCL,” he said.
The council had also asked the unionists “to explore whatever means and whatever resources we may be able to use to help to restrengthen and to regroup the forces within our regional labour movement”, Sir Roy noted.
The council was responding to a resolution passed last Saturday during the annual delegates’ conference of the BWU.
Sir Roy said the CCL had been a very vibrant labour organisation years ago, with substantial financial support from several countries.
However, some funding had dried up, with “donor fatigue setting in”, and the profile of the CCL had lost some prominence, he remarked.
Sir Roy said he hoped other governments would come to the aid of the organisation, whose rebuilding could help bring some “balance into the labour market”.
“If the government doesn’t secure a balanced labour market, then the employer as a class . . . will most likely take undue exploitative advantage of the individual worker and the workers as a group,” he reasoned.
