by SIR ROY TROTMAN

I HAVE BEEN ADVISED that, during the recent CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) launch in Barbados, the labour question held centre stage for a while. During that brief moment, the matter of the abandonment of labour raised by me by letter was raised.

I am told that St Vincent's Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves' take on the matter was that labour does not know what it wants. I submit that Professor Gonsalves would never arrive at that conclusion, he nor any other self-respecting political or social scientist in our region.

In the first place, it is not a question of what labour wants; it is a matter rather of what labour needs! That weakness of labour is not accidental. Governments have sought to weaken trade unions in many ways, some quite clever and sophisticated; some barbaric and deserving of our contempt.

The governments quite clearly seem more interested in following the prescriptions of the World Bank, which though discredited, continues to claim in its DOING BUSINESS publications that countries with crippled or muzzled unions (or better yet with no unions) are the best ones to invest in.

Governments have been made aware of the need to strengthen trade unions.

Apart from Prime Minister Owen Arthur and now David Thompson, who makes annual subventions, and a three-year subvention by Trinidad and Tobago, the total assistance offered was reportedly $100 000.

Let governments vote with their feet:

1) Empower trade unions with technical support and enabling legislation.

2) Provide for training for key trade union officials to develop the research and other capacity to participate in global dialogue and not merely attend as part of the gallery.

3) Encourage inter-union dialogue and joint measures at building capacity at the national level.

4) Encourage and provide the means for trade unions to continue to function as independent organisations.

5) Discontinue programmes which discriminate against some unions and divide the national energy.

6) Pass enabling legislation to give proper applicability to International Labour Organisation Conventions 87 and 98, about trade union recognition and the right to bargain collectively.

7) Provide for adequate forums in which trade unions (and employers) can regularly share information of national and of regional significance.

8) Treat leaders of the workers with the level of respect which the leaders would demand for themselves. This should naturally be reciprocal.

Workers know what they want. They have disciplined themselves in these times, however, to pursue their needs. These can easily be summed up in the phrase "decent work and social justice for all".

Is that asking too much?

l Sir Roy Trotman is general secretary of the Barbados Workers' Union.