Independent negotiating team required
Government should engage the services of a professional team of independent negotiators to deal with public sector industrial relations matters.
That’s the suggestion coming from veteran trade unionist and Barbados’ Ambassador to CARICOM, Robert ‘Bobby’ Morris, who said that such a measure would go a long way in helping to address the problems that exists in relation to public sector industrial relations in this country. Morris was speaking on Friday afternoon as he delivered the Astor B. Watts Lunchtime Lecture at the Democratic Labour Party’s headquarters. He made the point as he noted that in the present situation, civil servants within the Ministry of Civil Service and the Personnel Administration Division (PAD) are negotiating for civil servants and on the other side of the table are civil servants from the unions who are in most cases their juniors, and he is adamant that this is “recipe for disaster”. With that in mind, he contends that the current process for negotiation needs to be re-evaluated.
“My advice is that Government should hire a professional team of negotiators, civil servants, PAD people, politicians give them their remit, these are what you can do and let them negotiate with the union. They are working on behalf of the government but they are not working in the government. Those people can be found in Barbados; we have economists, we have doctors, all kinds of people. If it breaks down right now you cannot go to the Labour Department for conciliation because that’s Caesar going to Caesar, so the Labour Department has no role,” he said.
To that end, Morris, a former Deputy General Secretary in the Barbados Workers’ Union is suggesting that to deal with that dynamic, conciliation panels should also be established, so that if there is a breakdown in negotiations between the proposed negotiating committee and the trade union, then it would go up to mediation. Where the matter cannot be settled there, Morris is further suggesting that it should go to binding arbitration. All this, he maintained, would help to ensure that this country cannot be held to ransom by striking workers.
“You are not going to get threats of general strikes again, can’t happen; that your country can be held to ransom by bringing out Port workers,” he stated.
He spoke of the role that such a committee could play as he referred to the matter involving then principal of the Alexandra School, Jeff Broomes and the Barbados Secondary Teachers Union, where a commission of inquiry was set up to address that matter.
“We lost a whole lot of time over foolishness, when all we had to do was set up the institutions, go to the law for remedy and then we would all live with it,” he said. (JRT)