Orville Taylor | Trade unions: our staple

No! You cannot! Exactly 40 years ago, as a young conciliator, I conducted a ballot for representational rights, for one of the minor trade unions seeking bargaining rights for workers employed in the Kingston Free Zone.

After months of the squeezing out information from the employer, like a tube of toothpaste in a poor household, the workers had their say, and in the end, the majority of them indicated that they wished that particular union to be their bargaining agent.

A mixture of disappointment, betrayal and consternation, coloured the face of the expatriate manager. He lamented from the side of his mouth, a statement about giving the guarantee that they would have been protected from unions encroaching on their right to manage.

He pulled me to the side and pressed the point, suggesting that instructions had come from the highest level, that anti union vaccine would have been administered.

Having scrupulously studied labour laws, backed with knowledge from a flick of the wrist, I quietly assured him that, despite his misgivings, at best someone must have misled him or he somehow lost the message in the interpretation as across the language barrier.

As it was then, it is now, the right to union membership, and to a slightly lesser extent collective bargaining, are inalienable, as some of the other fundamental human rights under various UN instruments, including those of the International Labour Organization (ILO).

Post World II Conventions, 87 and 98, which address freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining, respectively, show no ambiguity on whether or not these are basic human rights.

So powerful are these two, that along with six others, they comprise a package of eight, which do not require any ratification, in order to be binding on member nations.

Therefore, as long as a country is an ILO or UN member, it is bound and has to bring its laws and practices in harmony with them.

As we removed the Union Jack and ‘God save the Queen’, ratification was almost immediate. Then the biscuit crisp Constitution enshrined these into its supreme law.

Lucky 13 years later, the Labour Relations and Industrial Disputes Act (LRIDA) went a step further and reinforced this in Section 4.

Apart from explicitly inscribing the right to belong, it has the countering right to not belong to any. Moreover, this statute specifically speaks to the way in which ‘union busting’ can take place. Thus, if one induces financially or intimidates, gives or denies a benefit, based on union or non-union membership; then this is a breach.

Further it has sanctions, which are enforceable before a court of law.

Under Section 5(3) of the LRIDA, if there is any question as to whether workers in any potential bargaining unit, wish to be represented by any trade union, the Minister of Labour may conduct a ballot. This is essentially a mini election, with ballot papers, boxes, voting lists, and returning officers.

Connected to the Act, are regulations, which give detailed, even tedious instructions as to how the minister shall conduct these polls.

Once conducted, the moment that the minister advises the parties that the union gained the majority of eligible vote; it has to be recognised as the legitimate bargaining agent.

There is nothing that the employer can do, except to recognise the union until such time that another ballot is held and the result show that that the workers no longer want that or any to represent them.

Perhaps because the older Section 23 of the Constitution, removed in 2011 with the introduction of the Charter of Rights, it explicitly gave workers the right not only belong to trade unions, but also to actively participate in their activities. The powers in Parliament; both sides, agreed to excise it.

Since the early 2000s, the occasional cry to return to the anti-union vaccine keeps popping up, especially when they turn productivity into a four letter word.

This is the right not to be trifled with, because the right to be members of unions is not only the backbone of our democracy; but it is the entire skeleton., although sometimes we remove the contents of the skull.

Long before we ratified Convention 87 and 98, Marcus Garvey, our first national hero, in 1929 advocated not only that workers form trade unions but they should also use them to form political parties. Having done so, they could seek election to the legislature and determine their own destiny.

Remember, this was 15 years before we gained universal adult suffrage, nine years before the founding of the People’s National Party and 14 years prior to the inauguration of the Jamaica Labour Party.

Our trade unions created the two major political parties. This is an eternal debt that Parliament must continue to pay. After all, a protected workforce, is a productive labour force. The opposite is true too.

In a country where the research clearly demonstrates that the above is true, it is also a fact that inadequate and incompetent labour leadership only exacerbates bad situations. For the record, worker satisfaction is also connected to social pathologies, like crime and violence.

Once there is recognition that good governance is intimately and inextricably wound into the fabric of national development, all of the nonsense of deunionising the country will stop.

Trust me, inasmuch as trade unionist often sound like ‘nuff’ crockery; we, more often than not have to thank them for their leadership, especially when a company or the country is going through a crisis.

Long live Marcus.

Orville Taylor is senior lecturer at the Department of Sociology at The University of the West Indies, a radio talk-show host, and author of ‘Broken Promises, Hearts and Pockets’. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and tayloronblackline@hotmail.com