Orville Taylor | Unmuzzling the ox and cutting the bull

Do not muzzle the ox, that is grinding the grain (1 Timothy 5:18). Oxen are cattle, generally male and believe me, if you approach them from the wrong end, you have to deal with a lot of bull chips.

Bovine species have served man for centuries. And even more than Western civilisations, the inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent know that cows are special and must be treated with dignity.

In a previous column, at the risk of offending my Christian brethren, I asserted that the imagery of the Indian cattle herd was a superior one to that of the biblical Good Shepherd, because ultimately, after the wool is shorn, the sheep meets the same fate as if it had been exposed to the wolf that was masking itself in its clothing. Point is, the sheep really is not protected, but is led into a false sense of security. Then, after getting fleeced, the shepherd and his friends and family gorge on its flesh, without even bothering to say, “A nuh mutton!”

Another important distinction between sheep and cattle is that the sheep will hardly ever protest and is so duped into complacency, that it doesn’t even realise that it is literally being led to the slaughter.

And even if it rears up and protests, it being a smaller animal than the average man, is hardly likely to deliver a lethal blow. Not so with the ox, which ranges up to 10 times the weight of most men.

A raging bull is nothing to play with. It carries all of the latent DNA of the wild bovines, such as the guar and the buffalo. Domestic cattle kill an average of 20 Americans annually, African buffaloes account for 200 deaths annually.

Even a fully grown male lion is no match for a large domestic bull.

True, Jamaicans red and black poll are far removed from their wild ancestors. However, we are never completely tame. What is strange is that political and commercial leaders sometimes seem to have wilfully skipped the class when history was teaching. If followed, history is an excellent teacher.

NO PLEASURE

There is no pleasure in being right when one is a prophet of doom. But the writing has been on the wall as I rang the warning bell for the last two decades, regarding the correlation between low labour standards and low productivity and high social violence. Over the last few months, there have been some daring ‘operations’ carried out by criminal elements, who seemed to be a step or two ahead of the game not limited to Beryllium, the flagship brand of the Guardsman group, the attacks have been bold and, in some cases, clinical. The optics of the adjustment give little confidence to the public.

Flooded with images of what looks like a set of hapless armoured and armed guards, who seem not to be able to protect even themselves, the Jamaican security forces, already beleaguered with a high homicide rate, is now seen escorting the escort. That in itself is a tacit admission about how insecure the security really was. More directly, it has been announced that the Jamaica Constabulary Force and the Jamaica Defence Force will be giving training to private security guard companies.

The big question, therefore, must be not just to those private users of security companies but, most important, to the public, who are the employers of the Jamaican government, is, “what really had we been paying for given that 60 per cent of the services provided by the private security industry is utilised by the government”.

Around 20 years ago, while looking at the coming crisis called contract work as well as the patterns of working time among Jamaican workers, for the International Labour Organization (ILO), the disturbing trend of the race to the bottom was drawing a lot of attention among labour scholars such as myself.

What was discovered is that with this new approach to free trade and laissez-faire economics, the modus operandi of the producers of goods and the providers of services, was to depress labour standards, including flouting fundamental human rights conventions, and relying heavily on semi-skilled or semi-trained labour, in order to compete.

RACE TO THE BOTTOM

Thus, this ‘race to the bottom’ was essentially to see what level of production could be had by disregarding or reducing ILO’s fundamental labour standards, such as those dealing with forced labour, discrimination, child labour, and of course, freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining.

It should never be forgotten by the 63 members of the Jamaican Parliament, that the last plank above is the basis upon which their political parties were formed and maintained for decades.

Therefore, as more evidence of the abridgement of the right of freedom of association, in particular, started to emerge in Jamaica, the warnings were not merely of academic interest. The data clearly demonstrated that low labour standards might lead to higher production in the short term but low productivity in the medium to long term. Moreover, indecent work, which is the antithesis of high labour standards, invariably would lead to higher levels of violence.

The message is clear, as St Mary member of parliament Bobby Montague justifiably and appropriately advocates the elevation of Chief Tacky to national hero, that poor labour standards among the masses always leads to upsurge of violence.

The oxen must be fed, and untrained and hungry gatekeepers cannot keep gates; and workers with fragile contracts will not deliver the level of loyalty to keep the empire afloat.

Not even titanium can hold an angry bull. Therefore, an alloy with copper, aluminium, magnesium, or nickel might be great in resisting heat; but it cannot weather this storm.

- 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.