TRADE UNIONS BEWARE!

SOCIAL Activist David Comissiong is cautioning Barbados’ major trade unions that “it is not everybody who marches with them who really is committed to them and the fundamental interest” of the country’s working class.

Yesterday, reflecting on Monday’s march where an estimated 21 000 private sector workers, along with trade unions and business owners, took to the streets of The City to protest the controversial National Social Responsibility Levy (NSRL) and to call on Government for urgent dialogue, Comissiong said he sensed that “the Barbadian establishment has fixed upon this very backward idea that the way to solve the economic problems of Barbados is to retrench public sector workers and engage in forms of privatisation”.

“Now, to me that is a very backward idea. That is an idea that does not subscribe to the concept of our nation being a family where we have to look out for the best interest of each one.

“A family where nobody is thrown on any dump heap and simply made a scapegoat and left to suffer. But, I hear this sentiment being expressed. I hear this sentiment coming from political elites. I hear this sentiment coming from private sector elites,” he said.

The activist administered the dose of advice to the unions yesterday, following a public rally in Golden Square, The City, to commemorate the country’s Day of National Significance – the date of the 1937 people’s uprising.

Comissiong also warned the leaders of the labour movement that they are going to have to fight a serious battle as they stand up for workers, in the coming months.

“I see that battle coming and I would just want to urge the trade union leadership to prepare for it and to think about the alternative, the philosophical and programmatic alternative to that backward way of thinking.

“Of course, there is an alternative that says that Barbados can solve its economic problems without savaging public servants and without throwing people on the dump heap of unemployment.

“There is an alternative that says that the fundamental economic strategy of this country has to be upon educated, trained and empowered people,” he said.

“Within that context it is therefore counter-productive to be throwing people onto unemployment. It is counter-productive to be making it more difficult for people to acquire education and training. So there is an alternative, but it calls for effort and unity of thought and purpose of coming together to work out that alternative,” the President of the Clement Payne Movement said.

Comissiong said, in his view, the massive march was an expression of people power, noting that leaders of the country are temporary holders of some of the power that the people repose in them.

“So if the people decide that they need to through coming out on the streets to give an expression of their power and of their views and of their feelings, then we should all applaud it,” he said. (AH)