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Chairman of the Social Partnership, Prime Minister Freundel Stuart; and Chairman of the Sub-committee of the Social Partnership and Minister of Labour, Dr. Esther Byer-Suckoo, in conversation prior to the start of yesterday’s meeting.

Social Partners sticking together

 

THE Social Partnership has faced tremendous stress lately, but Prime Minister the Right Honourable Freundel Stuart says this has not broken their resolve to stick together.
 
Chairing the meeting of the full tripartite grouping yesterday morning at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre, Prime Minister Stuart said that the Social Partnership initiative was embarked on at a time of national challenge and the country has benefited greatly from the collaborative efforts of the private sector, the labour movement and the State working together. However, he is suggesting that its greatest challenges have come in recent years.
 
“I do not think though that the Social Partnership, the tripartite dialogue, has undergone stress as great as it underwent over the last few years when of course there were economic challenges facing the world, the region, and of course, Barbados. But thankfully we have worked our way successfully, I think, through those challenges. The Social Partnership was put periodically under stresses of various kinds, but the maturity, the insight and the faith in the future, led all the Social Partners to see the value of sticking together, rather than allowing fissiparous or splintering tendencies to get the better of us,” he stated.
 
With that in mind, he said that the yesterday’s discussions would help to consolidate that relationship, and he was looking forward to the “spirited and frank and honest interventions” from those participating in the deliberations. Among the topics expected to be discussed yesterday were Government Finances and Foreign Exchange Reserves and the Ease of Doing Business.
 
Yesterday’s meeting was the first of all the tripartite players since July 2015 and also first for the new Chairman of the Barbados Private Sector Association, Charles Herbert and General Secretary of the Barbados Workers’ Union, Toni Moore. 
 
Prime Minister Stuart acknowledged that the meeting was supposed to have taken place since May of this year, but he indicated that on account of representations made to him by some Social Partners about “certain preliminaries” that needed to be addressed, the meeting had to be deferred while those preliminaries were dealt with.   
 
Also speaking at the opening was President of the Congress of Trade Unions and Staff Associations of Barbados (CTUSAB), Cedric Murrell, who was pleased that Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and Productivity and Engagement were also on the agenda for discussion. The veteran trade unionist said a climate conducive for ongoing FDI is important. He said if successfully created, it would allow for growth in the country which would be of benefit to the workers.
 
On the topic of Productivity and Engagement, noting that these are two matters that deeply impact our working population, the CTUSAB official said that the meeting provides the platform for them to share their concerns and views and “hopefully concretise” a way forward to see how to address those areas. (JRT)

 

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