Labour expert: Workers fear victimisation, afraid to join unions

NEW and revised legislation, easier unionisation and government involvement for a tri-partite solution are what is needed for to advance industrial relations (IR) in Trinidad and Tobago, according to panellists at the UWI Arthur Lok Jack Global School of Business' seminar Beyond Bargaining: Building Sustainable Workplaces in T&T, held at the school’s Mt Hope campus on June 17.

Speaking during the panel discussion titled Balancing the Bottom Line: Industrial Relations in Action, Joint Trade Union Movement (JTUM) assistant general secretary Trevor Johnson said industrial relations and the way it was managed were critical to the success of any organisation.

“If you have an effective twinning of labour-management relations with human resource management and industrial relations management, it will rebound to the benefit of your organisation.”

National Workers Union president Dave Smith said industrial relations was different from human resources.

“Industrial relations is about understanding the nature of the relationship between employer and employee and what influences or regulates it. Regulation basically is going to be the legislation we have, particularly the Industrial Relations Act.

“Other factors that influence the employment relationship include inflation, unemployment, tariffs, globalisation, new technology. The employment relationship is inherently unequal as it’s about power, and the only way you can break that is through union recognition.

"That’s the way to try to balance a little bit the unequal relationship between labour and power. Without union recognition, all the industrial relations are determined by the employer. It’s a one-sided game.”

He said getting union recognition under TT’s Industrial Relations Act was a nightmare. He cited one case where it took 19 years for a unit to be recognised, by which time some of the unit members had retired or died.

“More than 80 per cent of workers are not covered by collective agreements. They are afraid to join a union or raise their voices because they are sure they will be victimised.”

Smith said why the workday had to be five days a week, 40 hours a week, when studies showed the same productivity could be achieved in less time. He said renegotiation of the working week had to be done from a position of power, which workers did not have.

Co-founder and director of management consultancy firm Zatopek Solutions Inc, Jennifer Deonarine said in Barbados, true tri-partite agreement had been reached,

“Under the auspices and with the help of the International Labour Organization, government has agreed to halt particular legislative measures, labour has agreed to exercise restraint in term of wages, and employers have agreed to exercise restraint in terms of cost.

"I don’t agree that the only factor in balancing inequity between parties is union recognition. I do agree there needs to be government representation because tri-partite discussion needs to have three parties.

“The reality is that until we get honest with ourselves that we want to have tri-partite discussion, we are going to continue to have antagonistic discussion around industrial relations.”

Deonarine said the tone of discussion was set by the leaders of the country and a national discussion needed to be had where all parties were committed to the future of the country.

Moderator Kiss Baking Company human resource manager Kashta Ome asked whether managers were not also workers and if unions should also be looking at advancing their rights.

“If we are going to say the company is only about boosting shareholder value, isn’t that to the benefit of everyone and the ability to pay wages and to invest and grow so we can have mortgages and drive electric cars, etc? When do we move from sticking to those basic tenets that we are at bi-polar points and really get back to what Promalco (the ILO’s Programme for the Promotion of Management and Labour Cooperation) taught us, because there are some important lessons in those experiences that said this is how management and labour should co-operate.”

Johnson said the programme was successful but the benefits were lost when new ownership came in and organisational culture changed. He said change could happen if all were concerned about both the bottom line and the workers’ perspective.

Ome asked for the panel’s thoughts on the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) in the workplace.

Smith asked who benefited from the introduction of the technology. He said there should be dialogue between workers and employers on how AI should be incorporated into a company, especially if it meant re-training and/or loss of jobs. He said that meant there needed to be a union to negotiate on behalf of workers.

Deonarine said the rights of workers were already legislated and there was the mechanism through labour to treat with the enforcement of those rights.

“I think labour is critical, but it cannot be a one-sided conversation. The introduction of technology into the work environment is largely driven by the employer and that is because the employer is finding a way to become more timely and more efficient. If that means the introduction of technology, that’s the way it goes.

"However, the organisation and the environment and the entity we exist in needs to be bigger than the people who sit in the (management) chairs.”

Johnson said appropriate legislation was needed to protect the rights of workers where there was no collective bargaining agreement. He said the target of the ILO was to have 80 per cent of workers in a company in a unit, but where that was not possible, the legislation should be robust enough to protect the rights of all workers.

“The Industrial Relations Act has not been updated in 60 years, and the government needs to look at that. They need to make sure workers are not being taken advantage of.”

Deonarine said there was a surplus of labour and asked why the National Skills Agency was not being used to train people in the skills the country needed to enable TT to compete globally. She said government needed to look at the workforce in a non-political manner.

She said labour, employers and government needed to sit together and decide on an environment where companies could make money but also there was a decent work agenda for workers.

Johnson said TT took for granted the peace and stability it had right now, which came from the Industrial Stabilisation Act, which took away the rights of workers to strike, which was good for the society but not for the workers. He said people were not an obstacle to progress.

A member of the National Union for Domestic Employees called on those present to petition government to recognise domestic employees as workers. She said domestic workers were paid when, how and what employers wanted and they had no recourse through the Industrial Court, despite being almost indispensable.

Johnson said TT was in a deficit with respect to the number of ILO conventions it had ratified. He said at the last meeting of the convention, there had been no objections from employees and it was up to government to sign on.