Labour Minister: HIV/AIDS legislation, sexual harassment workplace policy coming in 2025

HIV/AIDS legislation, a sexual harassment workplace policy and the re-operationalisation of the tripartite labour council are just some of the issues at the fore of the Labour Ministry’s agenda in 2024/2025.

This was revealed as Parliament’s Standing Finance Committee, on October 15, examined the ministry’s expenditure for last fiscal year and its planned spend for the upcoming fiscal.

Couva South MP Rudranath Indarsingh asked Minister of Labour Stephen McClashie about the ministry’s planned expenditure of $200,000 on labour legislation reform.

McClashie said Cabinet has been examining a number of laws and policies which it believes need to be reformed or implemented.

“The Industrial Relations Act, Retrenchment and Severance Benefits Act, Recruitment of Workers Act, Minimum Wages Act, Maternity Protection Act, Occupational Safety and Health Act, and the Trade Union Act. All of these different pieces of legislation are now currently being looked at through various cabinet subcommittees and so on, and we expect that it will go the Ministry of the Attorney General in the next few months, most of them, for writing the appropriate legislation."

He anticipated some of them, including legislation to govern dealing with HIV/AIDS, might even be ready to be laid in Parliament next year.

“We have a lot of work that has been done and we continue to do, and we hope in 2025, we see several of those pieces of legislation come into Parliament. We are well advanced on many of them."

McClashie said $500,000 has also been allocated in the 2024/2025 fiscal year to implement a national workplace policy on sexual harassment.

He said a trilingual telephone hotline has already been implemented and is receiving calls from both employers and employees, with the majority of callers being women.

“We would have put in a telephone hotline in English, Spanish and French, and we've been having a number of calls coming through.

“The issue is that many women…have real issues in reporting sexual harassment because of victimisation, because of the shame factor, because they just don't even know who to go to. Therefore, a lot of our work in 2025 would be sensitisation, both to local and migrant workers, with regard to what their protection is and how they can report these matters and not suffer the consequence of being fired, particularly with single mothers who are vulnerable.”

He described the money to be spent on literature and television and radio advertisements as “a start in the right direction.”

McClashie also said although no money had been allocated to the National Tripartite Advisory Council (NTAC), he intended to look into what could be done to restart it.

“It is currently non-functional, but I have asked the Industrial Relations Advisory Committee to prepare, for my benefit, a paper on how other jurisdictions treat with tripartism and to seek to find a way to re-operationalise the whole issue. Because I think as Minister of Labour, it is one of the tenets that make for good industrial relations, that we should be engaged with our partners in open dialogue.”

He said there needs, however, to be more structure around the council and its operations.

“The problem we have had is that it has been very loose and that the structure under which it operates is not as clear as it should be. Some people legislate it, some people do it by policy. And we are examining what and how we can attempt to resurrect it.”

The council fell apart in April 2021, when the National Trade Union Centre (Natuc), Joint Trade Union Movement (JTUM) and the Federation of Independent Trade Unions (FITUN) withdrew from the committee, claiming their participation in it was sacrilegious to the objectives of the labour movement.

In June 2022, Natuc president James Lambert said NTAC did nothing for labour and accused the government of failing to deliver on promises it made after the unions put forward proposals.

Public Services Association president Leroy Baptiste told Newsday McClashie’s comments were worthless unless the entire cabinet shared similar sentiments.

“The Minister of Finance has gone in every budget debate and dictated what (percentage wage increase) people are getting and no more. Does that sound like somebody who wants to engage in any dialogue?”

He said the PSA was willing to engage in tripartite discussions, but questioned how much influence McClashie had.

“He needs to bring the rest of cabinet in alignment with his mindset that there is a need for engagement with relevant stakeholders as part of the tripartite arrangement. He needs to make converts of his cabinet ministers before he make converts of persons outside the cabinet.

“When he brings (his cabinet colleagues) on board, (the PSA) is ready set and willing to meet and treat with the government with respect and regards to each other’s role.”