Acting Senior Labour Officer Edwin Cobham told employers that there was a contract
of employment and a contract of service.

He was speaking at a labour/management relations seminar last Wednesday at the
L.V. Harcourt Lewis Auditorium on Belmont Road, St Michael, which was sponsored by the Labour Department.

Cobham said the preference was for the contract of service and some people were abusing it and telling their employers not to make deductions, but then did not pay them in.

He advised the bosses not to let their employees derail them from doing the correct thing.

"What employers in Barbados need is a bureau or a single source from which they are able to draw on the profile of employees.

"Not with a view to throwing them out, but with a view to examining whether they are trainable and whether they have the capacity to be transformed into the kind or worker that we perceive that they ought to be."

Cobham told participants that given the workplace culture, if change was to come about, more than progressive legislation was needed. A transformation of the attitudes which people displayed in the workplace was essential, he added.

"The workplace does not only comprise of employees, it also comprises of managers and owners.

"I am saying that these people also need to be trained and this transformation should
be facilitated with new legislation that would deal with the particular issues that are causing difficulty," said Cobham. (WB)