When business runs red circles around Santa

Stanisclaus Joseph works for a medium-sized retail chain that has seven outlets scattered all over TT. He has worked with them for 20 years and has now reached the age of 54.

When he started primary school, the other boys couldn't get their tongues around Stanisclaus. They thought his name was Santa Claus so he was nicknamed Santa, and Santa he has been known as ever since.

Santa was a good worker. He got along with everybody and never cursed on the job or got into arguments with his successive bosses over the years. Even when provoked, he would just grin and say, "Ok. If you say so." He had no record of absenteeism except when he got the flu.

Well, everybody got the flu in those days.

Trinidad was a kinder place then and nicknames were a mark of affection and recognition. We were even affectionate towards the flu.

Do you remember having the "Jaws"? It really chewed you up. Then there was the "Ten Percent"? It ruined your work life.” The "Saddam” knocked us all down, and a lot of people died from "The Dole." It strangled you. Then there was “the 18/18,” in which nobody won.

But we didn't have social media in those days. Or quarantine or lockdown. When someone at work came down with "the Abu” in 1990 you did your best to avoid them. They used to sneeze, too.

Things did spread, of course. When chikungunya hit Belmont, within weeks it had spread throughout the whole of Cascade and St Ann's as well. When you had to stand in line for 45 minutes in the cashier’s line at the grocery because they were short-staffed you immediately made new friends by asking the person in front of you, "How did the chikungunya treat you?"

You knew they would have had it. Everyone got it. More people may have died of chikungunya, a nurse at the hospital told me, than have died so far of covid19, but, as I said, as we didn't have social media in those days, or quarantine... or lockdown, we just suffered through it and got on with life.

Santa got everything. He had had respiratory problems since he was in Belmont Boys' Primary. Weak lungs or something.

He hasn't got covid yet, but his job has become redundant. Not because of the pandemic but because of something much more far-reaching.

Technology.

It is a well-run company with a proper HR manager and wage and salary classifications agreed with the recognised trade union and up-to-date employment records. So when the company got into an essential arrangement with an international supplier with ISO2000 standards that required sophisticated computerised records, there was no need for a human being to do the job that Santa was doing. A machine took over.

There are not a lot of other jobs available these days for people without computer skills, and when Santa left school not even the teachers knew how to use computers. Some still don’t, and it is difficult for people like Santa, in their middle age, who have never used a computer, to start learning now. Santa just couldn’t.

There were no vacant positions at Santa’s company that he was qualified to move into.

There were vacancies. One of the workers in a classification considerably below his was about to retire, and his job, which Santa could easily do, would shortly be vacant. Santa still had a family to support. He was highly regarded by the company. He knew the history of the company and even more important, the company culture. How people treated each other, what was acceptable behaviour and what was not. He was the person the new guys could come to ask questions when they needed to know what was what.

The company had a pension scheme. Retirement age was 65, but if he was retrenched at 54, he would get severance, but not a pension he could support his family on.

So he was "red-circled.”

Although they get little thanks or praise for it in the press, business people in TT really are doing their best to keep the economy going. Many are the entrepreneurs who have clung to the hope that the current, and former, Minister of Finance meant what he said on May 20 that there would be grants to small businesses in the informal sector and what he called “a very innovative loan programme" to assist the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to stay afloat.

SMEs are still waiting and hoping. These he defined as the enterprises that make under $20 million a year, which is roughly 87 per cent of the businesses that employ workers.

One of these is the company that Santa works for.

But captain, their ship is sinking. Even without a lockdown, the drop in customers, and the drop in markets, SMEs are struggling to keep going, struggling to keep up with the standards required by suppliers, and more so, by customers.

Some try, rather than declaring workers like Santa redundant, to red-circle them. This means simply that even when their jobs are redundant, instead of firing them, they find a job at a lower level, but keep their wage where they were until gradual staff increases catch up. Even when things get better, people like Santa, having agreed to move to a lower classification will maintain their old wage.

But when the next wage increase comes along for the rest of the staff, theirs will not move until the wage for the classification matches theirs. It is an old-fashioned option that might keep the ship afloat for some.