What the board says, goes

Do you remember when we were all children and thought riddles were the most sophisticated word games we all played? We thought it was hilarious to ask, "When is a door not a door?" The answer, (in case you have no children at home under the age of seven) is, "When it’s ajar." I remember when I actually thought that was funny, not realising it was, indeed, sophisticated. A very sophisticated way of teaching us that words can be very deceptive, that they, depending on the context in which they are used, and the way in which they are pronounced, can mean very different things.

Handling industrial relations grievances can often equally depend on the different way words are used, particularly when there are distinctions between the contexts in which they are applied. Take the words “worker” and “employee”. And the word “manager”.

When is a professional employee a worker entitled to take a grievance to the Industrial Court to have it resolved there? And when are they forbidden to use the comparatively free services of the court? When are they a manager? These distinctions where differences exist are not just the food stock of riddles; they can lead to some very expensive human rights violations and court cases.

Under common law, I am informed by a colleague, any one working under a contract of employment is, logically, an employee. Employee/employment contract, geddit? He explained. I got it. Doesn’t it irritate you when someone hits you with logic and rationality when the Industrial Relations Act (IRA) won’t let you use them?

Because even the Trinidad head of a branch of NASA, if such a position existed, with three PhDs and an income greater than the President’s, is still an employee with the same industrial relations status as the receptionist’s assistant whose salary is only marginally above the minimum wage.

Unless the board of directors can show how, and in what way, the chief executive is responsible for the formulation of NASA policy and/or the effective control of the NASA undertaking or business, he, or she is not. Policy and the architecture of effective control is decided by the board of directors, not one director ­– the collective board.

There have been, for many years, requests from stakeholders for a reworking and amendment of our labour legislation by organisations representing the trade union movement, the employers' associations and people within the government establishments themselves. Tripartite organisations set up by sequential governments’ have made recommendations that have come, gone, and been ignored, as is our way.

Hardly surprising, since each of the representative organisations are only very small and select fractions of the groups they represent. Selected by governments that shift and change. Each change rubbishes even partial agreements made by its predecessor. We are all aware of the political culture that enables, even demands, this pattern. We live it.

Colonial-era laws passed on to us via the Legislative Council assumed that someone who was a manger was appointed by those who hired him to oversee the running of a plantation or a business, such as Lever Brothers, British Petroleum or Witco, and would be of the social class of the local owners of equivalent establishments. That they were occasionally benevolent and had the inclination, or power not to be, influenced the Colonial Office to pass legislation that would protect employees who were of the working class that could be, and often were, exploited or abused.

Fast forward to today: The “working class” is virtually everyone, at least every person employed by another from permanent secretary to captain to cook working for a doubles vendor. And many of the self-employed entrepreneurs who lived according to a community culture of saving and family collaboration, who were traditionally excluded from business and status levels to which they were unwelcome, as a result inherited a strong support culture which has benefited them, and their children, to this day.

The cultures once excluded from power and social prestige now dominate commerce. Policy-making in the multinationals now is placed above local managements. Policy-making rests in boards or is governed by legislation. Not one of the Trini CEOs of BP, Shell, or TSTT, has the power assumed by the drafters of the IRA, and repeated in the Industrial Stabilisation Act (ISA) that excluded them from the term “worker’, and were the absolute authorities they thought they were, and realised the problems they would experience being blocked from taking their grievances to the Industrial Court.

Nor does the ratifying of any or all of the ILO conventions by the government alone have the power of law over anyone in TT. Any such power exists only in the will of Parliament. Even once passed by both Houses by a majority vote, a law must await, drafting and publishing before proclamation allows implementation.

The Industrial Court does not have the power to make law in our system. But employers sometimes assume, as their owners did, that that power was theirs by virtue of financial ownership.

Not so. Most major policy issues in state enterprises are decided by Cabinet. All CEOs unless they founded and still own all the shares in an organisation are employees. They are hired under contracts of employment. And those contracts can be terminated without explanation. The law allows them to appeal the termination of a contract for cause but it is not automatic. The question is still being asked about whether the recent termination of the CEO of TSTT was a political scapegoating decision mandated as a result of the representative union’s anger over her taking “one for the team” and carrying out government’s orders to cut down on the vastly overdone staff numbers and contingent pension liabilities. Did anyone in TSTT think she had the power to make those decisions on her own whim?

The PSA may have to face similar consequences I am told, due to the pressure of over-employment in the Public Service and the resultant pension liabilities engendered by politicians of times past seeking votes.

The decision to not renew the contract of Industrial Court "employee" Deborah Thomas- Felix, as its president is embedded in the same culture. The new president of the court is a respected and competent member. The power split between one trade union faction approving her appointment and the other disapproving it is, granted, an acknowledged normal political power play within that community. We must listen.