Thursday, March 28, 2024

ALBERT BRANDFORD: Union-buster Stuart?

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AN ELEMENT of the fallout from the impasse between Government and labour over the forced retirement of ten over-60s at the Barbados Investment and Development Corporation (BIDC) has been the threat of a legislative response to the unions’ militancy.

Coming on the eve of a planned national shutdown, Government’s threat, though non-specific, could, if carried out, make trade union activities considerably more difficult, with the enactment of anti-union laws up to and including a restriction on their most potent weapon – the right to strike.

Should Prime Minister Freundel Stuart be successful in his quest to tame the labour unions, he would join two of the most powerful union-busters in practising democracies in recent times – United States president Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

They achieved remarkable success in confronting the unions that once had been thought was only possible in dictatorships and totalitarian states.

Stuart’s discomfiture has been caused by the approach of two young people at the head of the island’s largest unions – Toni Moore, at the Barbados Workers’ Union, (BUW) and Akanni McDowall, at the National Union of Public Workers.

He acknowledged that the country was entering into a new era of industrial relations, marking a departure from the path of negotiations followed by renowned unionists of old, and embracing tactics of bluster, bullying and blackmail.

“I’ve also noticed that you don’t start at a micro level to deal with these issues and graduate your resistance upward as at various levels you think that system has failed,” he added.

“What you do is to start by saying you’re going to shut the country down, so that innocent people who’ve done the world nothing, have to endure not having their garbage collected; have to wonder whether they’ll be able to get a bus when they want it; have to wonder whether what they regard as the certainties in their lives will continue to be certainties.

“Now all of this has taken place in the context of a system of industrial relations which we have practised ever since trade unions took shape and form in Barbados. It is called a system of volunteerism; we have not had any laws in place to regulate any of this.

“We have relied on the maturity, the conscientiousness, the civic-mindedness and the goodwill of our trade union leaders to manage this process.”

Having set out the grievance, Stuart was no more specific about the remedy than to point to the likelihood of taking advantage of the possibilities under Section 48 of the Constitution of Barbados which permits Parliament to make laws for the peace, order and good government of the country.

“This is the new wine of industrial relations that we are supposed to drink,” he remarked. “… (W)e have to now look for the new wine skins in which to accommodate this new wine of industrial relations which we are being asked to drink.

“Any steps the Government takes in this matter will do a number of things. For one thing, it will protect that trade union movement. The trade union movement has been too important to Barbados to be left to adventurers. The trade union movement along with the political parties have built Barbados and made it what it is today”.

While Stuart’s options may effectively be limited to making it more difficult for the unions to strike legally, Thatcher and Reagan had no such inhibitions.

In August 1981, Reagan broke an illegal strike by air traffic controllers [federal law banned government unions from striking] by peremptorily firing more than 11 000 and hiring thousands of replacements including from the military.

Reagan had deemed the strike “a peril to national safety” and struck swiftly after the controllers ignored a 48-hour ultimatum to return to work.

Ultimately, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organisation (PATCO) went bankrupt, but reality defied FAA projections about re-staffing and it took nearly ten years before they returned normal levels.

In England, Thatcher faced a barrage of strikes and intimidation from the unions until between 1982 and 1988, they were brought step by step within the law, recalls Sir Rhodes Boyson and Antonio Martino, in a Heritage Lecture.

According to the BBC, the National Union of Miners was very strong, with high membership and strong links to the Labour Party.

“It was also defiantly leftwing and militant, with no compunction against threatening industrial action.”

In 1984, with the Falklands War victory and a new general election mandate under her belt, Thatcher ratcheted up the pressure on miners who she dubbed “the enemy within” and broke their power, presiding over a reduction in union membership from 13 million in 1979 to 8 million in 1996.

Albert Brandford is an independent political correspondent.

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