Maziki Thame | Security for profit but not for workers

Some people are beneficiaries of the high level of crime and violence in our society. They include owners of security companies. The security sector has expanded in response to insecurity in Jamaica – capitalism can create a market out of anything, and especially, disaster. We might want to consider the expansion of the security sector as a form of disaster capitalism. Disaster capitalism is when private interests take advantage of destabilising events, in our case, crime and violence and the resultant fear that emerges from them. The capitalist solution: put security services on the market.

Over the last 10 years, the number of registered security guards increased from 16,461 as at March 31, 2011, to 23,320 this year or a 41 per cent increase. Interestingly, the numbers of armed guards have hardly increased, moving from 3,345 in 2011 to 3,473 this year. The 2018-2020 JCF Commissioner’s Report placed the number of police, including district constables, at 13,937. In 2010, there were approximately 12,000.

The difference between these bodies of workers tells us that there has been a privatisation of security in Jamaica. Indeed, we are told, the Government of Jamaica gives security companies 65 per cent of its business. That means that everyday Jamaicans are paying into the profits of private companies without themselves benefiting from the security they provide. Should we instead invest in fixing the police force, which ought to provide a national service?

Neoliberal economic thought tells us that the market is better than the state at setting the price for goods, services, and labour and that the private sector is best for producing efficiency, innovation, and economic growth. We should, therefore, be satisfied with the prospect of private security as an alternative to national, state-provisioned security.

OUT OF REACH

However, as with other processes where the provision of public goods becomes privatised, they are out of reach of many and are available to those able to afford the goods. Most Jamaicans are not able to afford to live in gated communities or hire security guards to police their property or bodies. Given the state of insecurity in the nation, it is the poor and significant sections of the middle class who are thus most insecure.

Among the insecure are the security guards themselves. As victims of neoliberalism, they have little or no protections related to their employment. At least, not until the court’s recent ruling in the case of the National Housing Trust (NHT) vs Marksman Limited, which has the potential to critically improve the lives of security guards. Guards suffer from long working hours, few breaks (including for bathroom and food), low wages, danger on the job, and are not even guaranteed that normal statutory deductions are paid over to relevant state entities on their behalf.

The Jamaican state has participated in cheapening labour through its turn to neoliberal economics, which turned workers who are unable to negotiate their wages from a position of power into independent contractors without the usual protections of employment. Security guards are among workers treated as such but the recent court ruling returns them to the status of ‘employees’ with benefits.

In response to the court’s ruling against Marksman and in favour of the guards, the security companies would wish the public to believe that they are the victims here. They wish to guarantee that their profits do not fall and that the Government should aid them in that process. In capitalism, entities face rising costs all the time. But the payment of low wages and provisioning of little or no protection for workers are ways of suppressing costs and maintaining profits at their highest.

While we may not be aware of the extent of profits produced in the security market, we do know that the wages of workers in the sector are determined by movements in the minimum wage. They are governed by the Minimum Wage Act. The recent four year delay in adjustments in minimum wages between 2018 and 2022 had the effect of cheapening the cost of labour. The longer the delay, the more meaningless the increase because the market will not tolerate high movements in wages.

WOMEN WORKERS

In the security sector, there is a 2:1 ratio of female to male workers. Under neoliberal capitalism, women especially have served as the world’s reserve of cheapened labour in offshore enterprises, exploited by global capital that can move freely across the globe in search of cheap labour. The Caribbean has had its own share of that market in the garment sector (freezones), which exploited women’s labour and which later matured into the expansion of the BPO sector.

We might surmise that women in Jamaica are more likely to stay in low-paying jobs because of their breadwinner roles. Mother-headed households represent over 50 per cent of the Jamaican family form. Women cannot, therefore, easily opt out of the low-wage sector without consequences for their children. On the other hand, men may have more room to take risk in higher-paid jobs in the illicit economy, which is related to high crime and violence.

The Jamaica Society for Industrial Security, which lobbies on behalf of the security industry, has proposed that the Government pass legislation to allow them to normalise a 60-hour work week, 20 hours above the 40-hour norm so that they will not have to pay overtime under the new employee structure. They have asked for a moratorium on payments of statutory deductions even after benefiting from, in the case of Marksman, not paying over NHT contributions between 2000 and 2016. Essentially, they wish a further free ride.

We have in this country been victims of slavery, and later, the operation of a low-wage plantation economy model. Neoliberal thought demanded that governments should side with private interests over workers. We should rethink that model, which we could argue is a fuel for the insecurity Jamaicans contend with daily. The court ruling against Marksman is an opportunity to rethink the question of whose interest the state should serve. It is an opportunity especially, to protect women who protect families and to build a better Jamaica.

- Dr Maziki Thame is a senior lecturer at the Institute for Gender and Development Studies, UWI, Mona. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com