Trade unionist: 80% of workforce in TT not unionised
Guardian: Keith Matthews
Ancil Roget, secretary general of the Oilfield
Workers' Trade Union. Photo: Keith Matthews
PORT SPAIN
Trinidad & Tobago Guardian
Petroleumworldtt.com
06 17 09
Tomorrow, trade unions will observe Labour Day 2009. Apart from age-old arguments of disunity and fragmentation among labour leaders who do not share the similar ideologies about how the challenges confronting labour should be dealt with, the movement is facing fundamental challenges. Key among them:
• contract labour
• declining membership
• allegations of alliances with political parties
Some trade union leaders spoke in detail about the problems, the challenges and the differences.
Declining membership
Ancil Roget, secretary general of the Oilfield Workers' Trade Union (OWTU), said that disunity in the labour movement is responsible for the dwindling numbers in trade unions. He pointed out that 80 per cent of the workforce is not unionised, yet there is an unwillingness by workers to join unions, which he blamed on ineffective trade union representation. “Less than 20 per cent of the workforce is represented by trade unions. It's a case of lack of representation, under representation and, in some cases, no representation.”
He said there are 12,000 members in OWTU, which covers a cross-section of sectors including: energy, electricity and light and heavy manufacturing. Hubert Constantine, acting president general of the Seamen and Waterfront Workers Union (SWWTU), said workers sometimes blame unions when they are retrenched and lose benefits.
Constantine said employers are the ones to shoulder the blame for the relatively small numbers in trade unions. He said a union's job is to defend workers' terms and conditions and keep their jobs.
Constantine said his union always warn employers that retrenchment should be a last resort.
“Other than retrenchment, there are other ways for employers to deal with problems. It's bad business for the employers, too. Unemployed people cannot purchase the products of businessmen, so everyone loses in the end.” Constantine said the SWWTU has about 2,000 members in such companies as National Flour Mills (NFM), the Port Authority, Alcoa and Johnson & Johnson, among others.
Mario Als, acting president general, Banking Insurance and General Workers' Union (BIGWU), said trade unions themselves are to blame for the challenges they face today. “The actions of disunity do not benefit workers that the unions claim to be servicing,” Als said. He said trade unions are going through a period of change and must move along with the times if they are to widen their base and attract new and non-traditional members.
“Unions must take into consideration the changing demographics. Unions now have to integrate women and young people into the leaderships of trade unions,” Als said. Dr Roy Thomas, economics lecturer at the Cipriani College of Labour and Co-operative Studies, said the problems facing the labour movement are not new, but it's significant that they are coming down on the movement at the same time. “For them it is a matter of deja vu. The danger of the conjuncture is that the challenges are emerging simultaneously. The trade unions cannot tackle the challenges sequentially; they must tackle them at the same time,” Thomas said.
He said the sharp decline in numbers is serious. Thomas said the demise of the sugar industry reduced the ranks of the trade union movement by 12 to 15 per cent. “Trade union membership in the oil, mining and refining industry and in public transport, has also declined significantly,” he said. Thomas said although there has been expanding employment in the service industry, unionising this environment of workers is difficult. According to Thomas, employment in retail sales, private security, fast food, guest houses and restaurants has risen by approximately 10,000 in the last 15 years. “The trade unions have been able to bring into their ranks very few of the 10,000.”
Contract labour
On the issue of contract labour, Thomas said this new type of work relations seems to impoverish the already working poor. “The indiscriminate drift towards a regime of contract work in the T&T labour market, the embracing of a pay system that seems to increase, not reduce, the numbers in the ranks of the working poor,” Thomas said. Als recommended that T&T take a look at British labour legislation and how it can learn from this on the issue of contract labour. Als said that under British legislation, an employer is obliged to make an employee who's on contract for three to four years, a permanent member of staff.
“In this country, employers are using contract labour to maximise profits.” Als blames strategic human resource management for employing contract labour in the workplace. “This has resulted in lack of job security,” Als said. Roget described contract labour as a “major enemy” of organised labour. “It is an easy avenue for employers to contract labour and there are no terms and conditions. This is exploiting the vast poor in labour,” Roget said. Constantine said contract labour is not only a problem in T&T, but across the globe, labelling it a threat to unions.
“Lifelong employment is dwindling. It is a challenge we face,” Constantine said. He said contract labour infringes on some of the fundamental tenets of industrial relations. “We still believe in a binding collective agreement. It guarantees employment of members.”
Constantine said the SWWTU has not yet had to confront the threat of contract labour in its bargaining units.
Downturn on unions
Constantine argues that trade unions in general have been negatively impacted by the downturn in the economy. He accused employers of using this an excuse to send workers home, a charge that Rudy Indarsingh, president general of the All Trinidad General Workers Trade Union, has made and which the Employers Consultative Association (ECA) has denounced Indarsingh for. “Employers are hiding behind the worldwide crisis and using it as an excuse to retrench workers,” Constantine said. He said his union will use everything at its disposal to defend workers' rights.
Roget said the impact of the economic crisis is bad enough, but what makes it worse is that the Government is not doing its part in ensure citizens are protected from the worse impact. “The national environment impacts on unions. There is the inability of the State to protect citizens,” Roget said. He said workers should not have to pay for a crisis they did not create. “There was a boom in this country and all this could not have been done without workers. We owe it to them,” Roget said. Als said that during negotiations, employers now point to the global economic downturn as a reason why they cannot concede greater benefits to workers. He said it is just an excuse employers are using to take advantage of workers.
Poaching
Talking about poaching, Roget said some unions use the term out of context. Many unions have been accusing one another of poaching on their membership. In a television interview on Tuesday, Jennifer Baptiste-Primus, president of the Public Services Association (PSA), accused the OWTU of poaching on its members at the Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA). Roget said his union has not been guilty of poaching, but the reality is that many unions are not representing their workers in the way they should. “Don't you find it convenient that they bring up the issue of poaching? The issue is lack of representation,” Roget said.
He called some of the present crop of trade union leaders “traitors,” saying they must be weeded out.
Constantine said the National Trade Union Centre (Natuc) condemns poaching in the strongest terms. “We agreed we'll go to Fyzabad, but will not participate with Fitun. They have been guilty of poaching,” Constantine said. Als said union members have the choice to join any union they wish, but there are ways to do it. “If workers are dissatisfied, they are free to go. What is not proper is for a union to go in another unionised environment and try to pull workers away,” he said. Als called this practice “ethically wrong.” He said there are “procedures” for unions to follow if workers want to leave one union to join another. “There are procedures that must be taken. There are protocols to be followed,” he said.
Traitors in the movement
At a press conference held at its San Fernando headquarters on Tuesday, Roget apologised to workers across T&T, saying it should have exposed traitors of the labour movement long ago instead of keeping it quiet.
Roget's comments came amid the widening rift with the PSA, with Baptiste-Primus accusing the OWTU of poaching health workers from the Northwest Regional Health Authority. Roget said he will not apologise for statements he made earlier about some trade unions becoming aligned to the ruling People's National Movement. “There is call for the OWTU to make an apology for statements made. I want to say that if there is one apology that has to be made, it is to the workers of T&T for not exposing the traitors before,” Roget said. He said that the OWTU will remain an independent body and will never ask favours from the Government.
“Some people believe it is time to relent and find favour with the Government because they are looking to the Government for favours. But we are an independent trade union. We want no approval for any housing programme from the Government or any project. Some people are in the pockets of the Government and so they try to promote the type of distraction,” Roget said. He dismissed as nonsense the allegations that there will be violence among workers in Fyzabad on Labour Day. “That talk about violence is nonsense. If there is any violence at all being meted out to workers, it is the industrial violence that is meted out to workers by unscrupulous employers,” Roget said. He said that under the Industrial Relations Act, Section 38:4, trade unions could not represent more than one essential service industry. Therefore, he said, by law, the OWTU can never legally represent workers from the health sector.
Roget said the only action that should be taken by workers is a united cohesive action to stop the Government from running roughshod on workers' rights. Saying that exploitation was continuing long after the 1937 labour riots, Roget said the time to act was now. “The only answer now is collective decisive action, mass intervention of the people. That action is the only action we can take, so we must not be distracted,” Roget said. He said all citizens and workers should participate in the Labour Day rally to Fyzabad Junction, where the labour movement was first spawned on June 19, 1937.
Solutions
Thomas said the trade union movement must deal with the issues that they face if they are to survive. “We are still looking for well-researched, expertly analysed, properly articulated trade union responses to a number of issues that have put a lot of pressure on workers and their families in recent times. “We are still looking, also, for a comprehensive trade union response to the ILO-initiated (International Labour Organisation) debate on decent work. Alas, such responses will not be forthcoming, given the climate of division in the ‘house of labour,'” he said. Roget argues there are still too many “traitors in the labour movement that must be weeded out.” He said some of the leaders are affiliated with political parties and they cannot properly represent workers because there is a conflict of interest. “We, in the trade union movement, must put our house in order.”
Story by Raphael John-Lall and Radhica Sookraj from
Trinidad Guardian
Trinidad & Tobago Guardian
Thursday, June 18th 2009
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