Orville Taylor | COVID-19 management: What went wrong?

Messages came in from call-centre employees – among them are my personal friends, some with asthma and other ‘underlying’ medical conditions – and they were disturbing – “Our bosses are not allowing us to practise social distancing and I am scared!” – one message read.

I am a specialist in labour law and industrial relations and I know that under Section 12 A (ii) of the Labour Relations Code 1976, enacted 45 years before COVID-19, that employers are legally bound to “organise work in such a manner as to provide in so far as is practicable and best guarantee for the workers’ safety and health”.

I did not ‘loud it up’, didn’t ask the Ministry of Health and Wellness to investigate, neither did I ask the inspectorate of the Ministry of Labour and Social Security to look into the reports. I should have, and I man up and accept my responsibility and blame. Miss Ivy and Elder Taylor taught me that real men/women acknowledge, “when yu wrong, yu wrong!”

We can kick the can down the road all we want but the new epicentre of the COVID-19 in Jamaica with the outbreak among workers employed in the business processing operations (BPO) was caused from people doing wrong things, and there is enough blame to go around. When COVID-19 was on our doorsteps, our Government and other responsible entities acted. The now beleaguered director general of the World Health Organization commended our health minister for his leadership and we even got self-engrossed in the mask debate as we took our future in our own hands.

Then two balls were bowled:

i) protect the Jamaicans already here from spreading the virus among ourselves; and

ii) secure our borders while allowing our nationals to come home, and the country had to keep running while inducing a sort of economic and social ‘coma’.

In such a state, the organism is kept alive and essential bodily functions are monitored. After all, the word is essential, which in the dictionary means, ‘absolutely necessary; extremely important or fundamental … central to the nature of something or someone’.

As Government encouraged, then dictated a scaling down of operations and instructed certain categories of workers to work from home, there was some initial confusion. What was meant was that the core workers, without which businesses and institutions could not function if not present, had to be on site. So, the janitor, who can’t clean the plant remotely, and the security officers as well as the supervisor of the production line were essential.

Incalculable

Now, as Mamma would say, what is joke to you is death to me, and one man’s meat is another man’s poison. Therefore, while an organisation might have a body of workers who are critical to its normal operations; the service it provides to the nation might not be indispensable, though highly desired and valued. Thus, a university on an island with a population too small to keep it viable might be of utmost social and political importance; but it is not critical to keeping the country functioning. However, if the clinic which provides treatment for the working poor closes, the impact of that is incalculable.

It is the job of Government to determine which sectors and industries are key and of vital importance. Nonetheless, in a time of crisis, with a state of public emergency due to a natural hazard, such as a hurricane, earthquake, or national unrest or pestilence, essential means, those activities which we cannot do without, and something more. The International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Committee of Experts came up with a binding and instructive definition of the term ‘essential services’ years ago, and it might be surprising, but logical, that the expression does not include ‘key industrial sectors’. Therefore, it is irrelevant whether or not an industry is a major contributor to gross domestic product or engenders national pride.

In any event, from the little economics that I learnt in Spanish class, on the whole, micro, small and medium enterprises are the largest contributors to economic growth, even in the major developed countries.

For the ILO, essential services are those where, “the interruption of which would endanger the life, personal safety or health of the whole or part of the population”. With this rule of thumb, although it is derived from a discussion regarding the right to strike, governments have clear guidelines regarding how to enact statutes. The ILO lists “the hospital sector, electricity services, water supply services, the telephone service, the police and the armed forces, the firefighting services, public or private prison services, the provision of food to pupils of school age and the cleaning of schools and air traffic control”.

Grudgingly, I also agree with the organization that “in the strict sense of the term: radio and television …” do not fall within the category. As a matter of fact, for more than 30 years, the ILO has been telling the Jamaican Government that the term is too widely used in existing labour legislation.

Still, if we decide that other sectors are critical, then it comes with great risk and responsibility. During the lockdown periods, workers in the essential sector must practise the spacing and other mandatory protocols and should be free to move, only insofar as they are going to and from work. This is even so for the Children of Babylon, one of whom lamented that when she got off duty, it was too late to go and feed her pigs on Easter Sunday.

At present, we are in a tailspin because of the apparent lack of compliance by a BPO. Inasmuch as there are tweets and anecdotal reports about the devious attempts by management to ‘hide’ workers who were packed closer than a brother, the Government must take full responsibility for taking the risk in keeping the sector open. After all, it effectively polices the bars, churches and other businesses who employ far more voters.

It was a gamble and it lost. Accept the blame and let us move on.

- Dr Orville Taylor is head of the Department of Sociology at the UWI, a radio talk-show host, and author of ‘Broken Promises, Hearts and Pockets’. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and tayloronblackline@hotmail.com