Blacklisting in industrial relations

Doing some research on an industrial relations issue last week, I came across a Jamaican, very academic paper that referred to someone as having been “blacked” by a trade union.

Being unfamiliar with the term, I dug further, with the kind of enthusiasm aficionados tend to have for their subject, and quickly got lost in the varieties of issues that came under the term and of which I had hitherto been ignorant.

I knew about “blacklisting,” which I first learned about when I overheard a very furious discussion by several highly placed Trinidadian men discussing who should or should not be allowed to join their club. Apparently there was a list drawn up naming people who were to be “blacklisted” – never to be considered to be allowed to join.

When I looked it up, I found that apart from banning someone from sitting in the “members stand” to watch cricket (there was also a sign that said “Dogs and women not allowed past here”), blacklisting has had a long and colourful history as a form of industrial action.

In fact you could say it hastened the passage of the Emancipation Act of 1833, when people in England blacklisted (boycotted) the purchase of sugar imported from the Caribbean because it was produced on plantations using slave labour. Half the sugar imports from the Caribbean were stopped and replaced by sugar from plantations in India that didn’t use slave labour.

Interestingly, there were some 70,000 people described as “free coloured or black" slave owners in Jamaica in 1833, according to the UK archives. It is all on Google, as are the names of the many “black or coloured” slave owners in Trinidad listed in the UK Archives at Emancipation as well.

Going further, I did, of course come across the most famous "blacklisting" of all, when, in ancient Greece, Lysistrata and the women of Athens, with help from a Spartan, refused sex to their warring husbands until and unless they stopped their warring activities. Apparently it worked. The Peloponnesian War came to an end.

Currently, so my research told me, the legal definition of "to black" or “to blacklist” refers to a register or a list that contains the names of people who for some reason are denied a particular privilege, recognition, service or access. It goes on to say that "someone whose name is on the blacklist will not be allowed to work in a particular field or organisation,” or “will be excommunicated from a social, professional (or religious) circle."

Which brings us back to industrial relations. There are, today, groups in Trinidad which forbid their members to associate with people not of their membership. They are forbidden by their leaders even to see members of their own families, or work with those not members of their group. I am serious. Either you have to get them to join your group or you must have
nothing to do with them. Not even if they wear a mask, wash their hands 16 times a day and keep a social distance.

The problem arises at work when your job includes contact with others not of your group.

Well, slavery has been outlawed, so you may have to choose between your group and your job, your social group or your family responsibilities. No one can force you to take that job.

So many people in that situation, like the Bobo Shanti who could not work for Babylon, chose instead to sell by the roadside on the highways and byways and thereby keep their integrity. You have to admire that.

Grievances also arise when you start off a job while belonging to one religion and then switch to another. This is sometimes the conflict when someone becomes a member of the Seventh-day Adventist, the Jewish or Muslim faiths, with worship attendances at jumah or church or temple on Friday, but the job requires work or regular shift responsibilities that must be done on those days.

What can you do? Our Constitution guarantees freedom of religion.

The question comes up more often than you would think, and can cause genuine anguish and conflict for people of faith. Sometimes this can be solved by switching to another job within the same organisation, if there is one, or offering to work “make up time” on Sundays, if that is possible. Mostly, it isn’t and it is back to a matter of choice.

But when it comes to using “blacking” as a group, refusing to provide a service, or fulfill a responsibility, as a weapon in order to force another person or group to agree to terms or conditions that you want them to agree to, this becomes what our Industrial Relations Act refers to as a “a sympathy strike” or a “secondary boycott”.

An example would be when the leadership of the group you belong to, persuades or orders the group not to patronise certain stores or buy certain products to force their will upon the targeted “other” to support your own solution to someone else’s problem.

That is illegal industrial action according to section 2 of the act.

Legal or not legal, we all know that it happened during the election epidemic when racial slurs were exposed. I mention it because it has happened again. But the catch is that blacklisting is not illegal if it is spontaneous, not done on the orders of anyone, but just by the conviction of individuals. There is a difference where there is a distinction.