A NEOLIBERAL philosophy that people “at the top” dishing out “licks” and those “at the bottom” receiving them are in some “win-win” situation is seriously hurting the local trade union movement, to the point where strikes are considered needless.
Political scientist Dr George Belle made this charge in a fiery speech at the Barbados Labour Party’s People’s Assembly, held last Sunday at St Philip Primary School.
In an address that drew a lot of applause, Belle reserved his harshest criticisms for the unions and the Government, dismissing the present Government as the “worst” since adult suffrage and complaining that the unions had let down their members by not striking or picketing over the planned laying off of 3 000 public service workers.
“There is clearly a problem with the trade unions,” he told the gathering. “More specifically, there’s a problem with the trade union leadership. I am not lashing out at any trade union because we need the trade unions. The trade unions are very important.
“[But] something has been done to them over the period and it’s 25 years of pressure. For 25 years they’ve been told that we are living in a situation of win-win. The people at the top that licking you winning and the people at the bottom that getting licks winning too . . . . It’s a neoliberal ideology that they have bought, a win-win philosophy. It has gone right across the society.”
Belle said that general secretary of the Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU), Sir Roy Trotman, and the National Union of Public Workers’ (NUPW) Dennis Clarke, were struggling to make a difference “but they’re under so much pressure I don’t know if they can make it”.
He said Government’s move to retrench Drainage Division employees should have been the opportunity for the unions to tell Government they would not stand for workers being “unfaired”.
Belle charged that in an environment where no sector or department was safe from job cuts, unions had failed to preach solidarity and that if one employee was affected, then all were.
He also charged that Government was applying “wrong policies” in response to the economic crisis.
“What we have in Barbados is no longer just an economic problem,” he argued. “We now have a political problem.
“You will not have investment, you will not have growth, you will not have recovery if the political problem remains. So one has to remove the political problem. If confidence is to return, you have to remove the political problem. If investment is to return, you have to remove the political problem. If you want to recover, you got to remove the political problem. If you want growth, you have to remove the political problem