Orville Taylor | It’s your ‘Kall’, Samuda

Approximately 66,000 workers are direct employees of the Jamaica Government. The public sector utilises around 60 per cent of all of the security services provided by the private security companies. Just under 30,000 workers are employed by this industry. Within this group 80 per cent are employed by a number of companies that can hold on one hand. It is not certain what percentage of them are concentrated around the middle finger.

Add to the number another set of workers engaged to unregistered security companies and the figure you could get deep into the 30,000s. Coupled with the public sector workers, still disgruntled over the devil in the details regarding their wage negotiations with the Government, and we are looking at close to 100,000 adults, all of whom are capable of marking an X. And we want to assure them Y.

Full disclosure has not allowed the nuts and bolts regarding the party campaign contributions to reach the public. However, I am willing to bet that the employers and other stakeholders, when combined en masse, are nowhere near the total numbers in the electorate, whose sympathy lies with the security guards, the police, customs officers, firefighters and teachers, among others. Workers vote and win elections in democracies; not capitalists.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness was a boy in 1985, and finance minister Nigel Clarke was still short of his 14th birthday. They were young birds, and knew no storm, because Hurricane Gilbert was still three years away. We had a tide-shifting general strike in that year and when Gilbert came, it certainly did blow the jobs of the government away.

On the other hand, Minister of Labour and Social Security Karl Samuda, at 43 years old, was already a veteran of three elections. He has maintained an unbroken streak as member of parliament for St Andrew North Central since 1980. Indeed, despite his ripe age of 81, he has no reason to fear ‘electile’ dysfunction.

MIGHT BE THE PROBLEM

And this might even be the problem. Samuda is one of the few persons to have crossed the political aisle, and won a seat. Most impressive, is that he went orange in 1993, won by a whisper 171 votes, then ‘wappy back’ after singing a Sankey, rode again to victory on a green horse, in 2002; however, this time in Opposition.

Samuda knows what it feels like to be in Opposition. And though, he has been successful in building almost a monarchy in his constituency; he has experienced long unpleasant droughts, which painfully remind him of the 1976 defeat and the promise he made to his wife, that even if he wears cheesy unwashed track shoes, he will never again smell ‘de feet’. He would know also, from the history of politics since the days of his party founder Alexander Bustamante and founding president of the Opposition People’s National Party, Norman Manley, that an almost perfect formula for losing an election is to turn the public sector and labour against you.

I was at the Ministry of Labour in the 1980s, when workers from the free zone and a smattering from the security sector, from time to time, marched unto the premises at 1F North Street, to express their disappointment in a labour ministry, which they believe had betrayed them.

In my 2019 conversation with then Labour Minister Shahine Robinson, whom I miss dearly and tearfully, we interrogated these matters. Settling all issues relating to the status of security workers was her swan song. The ruling Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) will do dishonour to her memory, if it does otherwise.

After the Marksman Security ruling last year, the best of legal minds confirmed that the terms and conditions of security workers really identify them as workers; and not contractors. Whatever kind of belly-dancing one may wish; the law is simply the law. In fact, these observations, which were confirmed by Justice Batts in that aforementioned case, were long made more than 20 years ago in several published documents.

IGNORED

Indeed, to my chagrin, too many people in high positions, for whatever reason, ignored much of this, even where external experts found that this and other observations relating to labour should be celebrated as evidence of our scholarship in the field.

While it is understood that the Ministry of Labour is not an advocacy entity, its mandate requires that it strike a balance between employers and workers and, importantly, enforce the laws, which were passed by two labour parties in the House named after the man who was murdered in defence of the rights of the poor. A failure on the part of Government to do what is right betrays not only the legacy of Bustamante and Manley, but of George William Gordon himself.

There is no space for vacillation, pusillanimous leadership, or knee-jerk reactions. Samuda must grab this opportunity with a clenched fist and speak definitively and decisively as to what Parliament intended, and the way forward.

There is a lot at stake here. Two decades ago, those of us who studied the sociology of labour saw the storm coming. My record in a body of publications and public speeches is not hidden under a bushel.

So let me give the warning again. Every single incumbent government since 1944, which has lost the support of the working classes or failed to act unequivocally in delineating workers’ rights, has lost the next election.

Second, there is extremely strong evidence that poor working conditions of workers, ‘indecent work’ fuels the crime and violence rate.

Let’s see if this is a multiple take, or a huff, and the king loses his crown in this game of checkers.

- Dr Orville Taylor is senior lecturer at the Department of Sociology at The University of the West Indies, a radio talk-show host, and author of ‘Broken Promises, Hearts and Pockets’. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and tayloronblackline@hotmail.com.