Slow-motion disinvestment looks like this

THE EDITOR: For Labour Day 2014, trade unions made their positions clear at the celebrations in Fyzabad, accurately identifying the problems of wastefulness in the People's Partnership government and the government's prejudiced settlements with labour.

Prophetically, labour predicted defeat of the PP, at the same time holding out no hope – for labour – to come from the other side, the People's National Movement. Indeed, the subsequent PNM government dismantled the economy in the ensuing years and sectioned it off to specialist interest capitalists.

This is where things stand today as discussions are aired for "privatising social services and cutting government employment." Here we are once more having to argue in 2020, all over again, against solutions of the type that emanate from the International Monetary Fund.

But we also see a convergence among the parties: what one does not progress or finish, when in government, the other picks up when it wins the election. So it would appear that since at least 2014, all the major parties, the PNM, the PP and the United National Congress, fully intend to run down the same "one pathway to the future" and decimate labour.

Are there some other phantom conversations going on in the background on this? The drive to make everything go online and, like banks, have fewer employees and outposts would fit in with that dialogue paradigm. In economics terms though, this overall process is called disinvestment.

E GALY

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