Gap between morality, industrial relations

In recent weeks almost every issue of every news publications has been replete with the complaints of Trinidadians of every race, ethnicity, gender and social, or geographic origin.

They seem to consist of mainly: “he/she did, “No, they/I didn’t”; “Oh yes they did, and it was illegal: “what he/she did was immoral." Immoral? Well what the others did was worse, it was unconstitutional!” Unconstitutional? What do you know about unconstitutional? Back in 2006, they said in Parliament, and they lied...” And so it goes on and on and boringly on.

Nothing creative, unifying or positive. And no, trying to destroy another person or group’s reputation is not creative. It is stultifyingly boring. But it is poisoning our society and we need it to stop.

Even in what was once one of the few relatively quiet environments available at work where people with difficult home environments used to go to escape family tension, the negativity creeps in. There are ongoing arguments daily about entitlement, about “rights versus eligibility.” And no. By virtue of having at some point having been employed, it does not give you the right to lifetime continuation in that job, not one in the government, not even if you belong to a political party that promises you one. That is an expectation so deeply held by the population, that 3,000 people lined up from four on a raw, rainy morning for the chance to apply for a job as a prison officer. Is there any correlation between that hope and the report of yet another prison guard caught smuggling marijuana and other items into the prison?

Quite incidentally, I suppose, they do know that in those occupations you are not allowed the right to choose your own hair style or what you wear, and in the position which can be both dangerous and difficult, you become a target for anger, resentment, and considerable stress. Prison work, like politics, has a culture of its own, and not all people within that culture are fortunate enough to have Debbie Jacobs to guide them when they are young. As they get older, they face very rigid expectations of behaviour and discipline, very much including the control known as self-discipline.

Frequently, when people who have not had the good fortune of having had parents that taught them how to discipline themselves (not the kind that thought a good lash would suffice), people in various non-prison related service positions quote the phrase “principles of good industrial relations practice” in their defence when they are criticised at work, without any seeming understanding of what those words mean. What are those principles? Are they, like Kant’s Categorical Imperative, or the UN’s human rights, something you are born with? Unchangeable, immutable, permanent? That no one can take away from you?

Well, yes. Theoretically. But there is something of a praxis – a gap – between theory and reality. Like the gap between the standards that religions claim to believe in and those they practise. I have been a lifelong student of religious philosophy. It fascinated me long before I studied it in university, and no religion I know of sanctions the abuse of children, yet within the clergy of almost every major faith practised around the globe, reports keep surfacing about sexual abuse, sometimes accompanied with violence. I cannot connect the obligation to care for children with the case report of a father who killed his 12-year-old daughter after he had impregnated her, justifying the murder because she had “disgraced the family” by getting pregnant while unmarried. And do not think that could only happen long ago, and far away.

So what about “good industrial relations?” Back in 1968, a young man who worked for Glendinnings, a department store in Port of Spain, was dismissed because he “got with child" a young woman who reported her condition to his store manager. When charged with this "disgraceful behaviour unbefitting a young man with good job prospects", he admitted responsibility for the deed but refused to do the honourable thing and marry her. Outright refused. Dismissal, considered justifiable, and to maintain the standards of "respectability" expected of employees of a reputable establishment (the words actually used at the time), followed. There was no grievance filed back then. There was no Industrial Court yet. Standards change as society does.

I somehow doubt, if that case went before the Industrial Court now, the court award would be punitive. Dismissals of staff for personal activities outside the workplace unless somehow job-related or criminal in nature do not come under the rubric of good or not good industrial relations. Exceptions are if the perpetrator ends up in jail and unauthorised absenteeism from the employment results.

But there are other reactions to take into consideration as well. I had one case where a mechanic served time in prison with authorisation from his manager, whose legal “authorisation” when he heard of the impending jail sentence consisted of: “Well, go to jail, then. You deserve it.” He was being jailed for raping a little girl. No relation to his work, but when he had served his time, he returned to get his job back, the work force struck, because none of the other workers were willing to work with him, they regarded his offence to be so heinous. He had not been fired and his lawyer claimed, according to the principles of good industrial relations, he could not be.

This may be an example of that gap between law and industrial relations. The practice of good industrial relations is finding a balance between the two.