Orville Taylor | Labourite mustn’t forget labour rights and labour riots

All of his peers said that he was the brightest finance minister in our history. Well spoken, very deliberate in his diction. A patriot, who meant the nation well. Importantly, the country was in crisis. Having come from out of period of economic stagnation.

There was some grounds well about how workers were being treated by employers, and despite admitting that ‘weed’ was important to our economy; local farmers were prosecuted. ‘Shotgun’ public sector negotiations were taking place, with a dictate regarding wage ceilings, guidelines and an ultimatum.

Although initially conciliatory, the public sector unions were as irritable as a common fowl dipped in water. Militant! Firemen were burning up, police were zero tolerant, and the civil servants, nervous about their jobs, were complaining that in real terms, their disposable income shrank or didn’t move significantly.

In a case of, ‘minister knowing best’; he said, ‘no more!’, and abruptly ended the conversations with the union. ‘Take it!’ he said, because you can’t leave it. Adding gas to the embers, he jumped on a plane, asked no questions and kissed the deliberations goodbye.

By now, you might have recognised that, despite the clear similarity to the present, it is a different historical period to which reference is being made. It was 1985 in the month of June and with a complete majority in Parliament and thus the ability to almost do as it pleases, the ruling Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) saw an escalation in the protests across the public sector. Never a popular government, it had won an uncontested election in 1983, where only 28,543 electors or 29.48 per cent of the 990,586 eligible voters marked their ‘X’.

HEAVY PRICE

When the dust had settled, the trade unions had paid a heavy price. For two days there was a national strike and the country was shut down. However, the government was unrelenting. Taking recriminating actions against firefighters, correctional officers and workers employed to the then state-owned Jamaica Public Service Company Limited, only men of the cloth seemed to have been spared the government’s wrath. Something about the current threats from the Ministry of Education and its instructions to victimise the workers who took industrial action last week eerily reminds me of 1985.

Major casualties of the government’s ire were the National Workers Union, the affiliate of the Opposition, People’s National Party (PNP), the Trade Union Congress, whose leadership was also aligned to the PNP, and interestingly, the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union, whose president, Hugh Lawson Shearer, was also the deputy prime minister, was caught between a rock and a hard place, and eventually capitulated. Prime Minster of Finance, Edward Seaga, made ‘Busta’ roll in his grave.

With the unions virtually castrated, the workers found other venues of expressing their social conflict. As in previous decades, they took it out at the polls.

Here is a sobering lesson from history, since the mid-1950s, when the society became divided into two camps, with the JLP/BITU on the one hand and the PNP/NWU on the other. Every single government that has been (seen as) anti-worker or anti-union, has lost the next democratically held election in Jamaica. Coupled with a perception of being anti-media or against freedom of expression; every single incumbent governing party experienced ‘electile dysfunction’. By July of 1985, the Prof Carl Stone Polls revealed that 55 per cent of Jamaica’s urban population and 61 per cent of rural residents wanted a change of government. Although he delayed the inevitable until February 1989, Jamaica had forever fallen out of love with ‘Eddie Blinds’.

WORKING ELECTORATE

One should note that the working electorate/poor determine the outcome of elections. There are not enough Comrades or Labourites to win a general election, without that independent 30 per cent of the population. These people want no handouts, but simply demand benefits from the labour laws, National Housing Trust and the other conduits.

To its credit, this current administration has implemented long overdue labour legislation and policy, advocated for years. These include the Tourism Workers Pension Scheme, Social Pension, and now, the big move towards recognising security guards as bona fide workers. Indeed, the public sector reform, which has guided the public sector negotiations, has been a vexed issue and is commendable. The problem is that Rome was not built in a day, and as logical as the process might seem, ‘haste makes waste’.

Having learnt from the attempts at rationalising and classifying public servants in the early 1990s, my warning has always been that the timeline is too short and will produce problems, which cannot be fixed by March 31, 2023.

Moreover, workers have a right, for which JLP founder Alexander Bustamante fought and went to prison. Therefore, the very thought of a JLP government threatening teachers and other public sector workers, who have stood up for their rights, is a major affront to the Labourites who died to give this administration the platform upon which they can build.

Yet, with the last PNP-commissioned Don Anderson polls showing that the Jamaican people have only 30 per cent (the committed Labourites) saying that the JLP should be given another term, compared to 45.3 per cent saying ‘No’; it is back to the future.

Nevertheless, with a 49 and 44 per cent negative ratings increasing from 39 and 27 per cent, respectively, for the prime minister and leader of Opposition; it is black dog and monkey.

But if the JLP wants to guarantee its departure – let it try to punish the teachers and others, who are simply fighting for their rights.

Let’s see if it’s Nero or Franco Nero.

- 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.