Are We No Longer Allowed to Be Trade Unionists? Mobilisation, Creative Resistance, Solidarity and Co
The following is a lecture presented at the 19th Annual John Cumberbatch Lecture organised by the Barbados Union of Teachers at the Almond Bay Conference Centre, Hastings, Christ Church, Barbados on Wednesday October 28th, 2015
On the Theme:
Building the Capacity of Unions through Partnership, Innovation, Networking and Education
Introducti
on
Let me begin by congratulating the leadership and executive of the Barbados Union of Teachers on your observation Teacher’s Week, and on your hosting of this, 19th John Cumberbatch Lecture. Let me also thank you for the honour bestowed upon me by your invitation as well as for your bravery in extending it.
I am mindful that as a weekly columnist in one of your prominent newspapers that I am constantly publicly judged by the claims of my column rather than the content of my character, and I am not unmindful of the fact that your invitation to me would have taken much deliberation.
As a public intellectual, I take my guidance from the distinguished Palestinian intellectual, Edward Said, who has insisted that “nothing disfigures the intellectual more than careful trimming and silence”. I have therefore always been unafraid to speak truth to those who hold the levers of power, whoever they may be and in whichever society I happen to live. There is much truth to the Biblical invocation that a man cannot serve two masters. One is either serving his intellectual convictions, or he is compromising those convictions to placate other interests. It is in the bending, the trimming, the fearful silences, the uncertain tiptoeing around hard and inconvenient truths that the intellectual is disfigured, and rendered harmless and useless to society. A silent intellectual is an oxymoron.
I say this, fully aware, that in recent times we have witnessed the elevation of a competing narrative which holds that silence is synonymous with political wisdom. While that may be true for other professions such as our political rulers, it is not true for the public intellectual, the prophet, the journalist and the priest whose role is to communicate ideas and information to the public.
I also come before you as one with a class bias. Unlike some who make a virtue of the intellectual as a neutral, detached, uninvolved, dispassionate observer of events, I take my lead from the Marxist directive that all ideas are class ideas, and that “the real task of the genuine intellectual is not merely to interpret the world, but to change it”. The intellectual is, whether or not he is conscious of this, a producer of ideas which work for or against particular class interests. Given the hegemonic nature of ruling class ideas, most persons are subjectively and often unconsciously, producers of ideas which promote the interest of economic and political ruling groups. One of the urgent messages I hope to bring tonight is that as vanguards of the workers movement, it is the duty and responsibility of the trade union movement to clarify its own ideas, so that it is always conscious of the class outlook which separates those who purchase labour from those who sell it.
Given my awareness of these issues, I have made a conscious decision that wherever my intellectual energies are to be utilised, I will endeavour to employ them in defence of, rather than in opposition to, the vulnerable classes in society who do not enjoy the privileges of economic, social and political power.
I have mentioned all of this to tell you that in my own deliberations over your invitation, I came to the conclusion that you have invited me to deliver this important lecture because of who you know I am, rather than in spite of what they say I am. I am aware of the prestige which you attach to this lecture series by the list of distinguished speakers who have preceded me. I am therefore fully sensitive to the honour bestowed upon me by your invitation, and I am equally sensitive to the heavy responsibility which it carries. I wish to assure you therefore of my commitment to honor both the privilege and the responsibility.
Explaining the Title:
It is in this spirit that I wish to address you here tonight. We are meeting here in a most difficult intellectual and political climate for the Caribbean labour movement.
This is perhaps the first time since the early years of struggle for the formation of labour representative organisations in the 1940s and 1950s, that the actual raison d’êtré of our unions is being called into question as a legitimate intellectual exercise. I am not referring here to a point of disagreement here and there about a stance taken by this or that union. I am referring instead, to the conscious and deliberate coalescing of ideological, economic, political forces, locally and globally, which have the effect of dismantling the independence post-colonial social contract which had placed the trade union movement at the centre of the independence and state building project.
Buttressing these new structural political and economic shifts, have been the emergence of new ideological world views now enjoying unchallenged hegemony, which now paint trade unions as obsolete and as backward relics of a past age. Whilst capital, by necessity, has always been historically opposed to trade unionism, the more worrying reflection of this new ideologically hostile attitude, is seen when persons who have past and present associations with the trade union movement, accept those new ideas as immutable truths and find themselves unable to intellectually justify and defend trade unionism.
A more extreme reflection of this development can be seen in persons who, having abandoned any hope in the workers movement, have now transformed themselves into defenders of state power and private capital, and seek actively and opportunistically to destroy and undermine trade unionism. A more innocent expression of these tendencies can be seen in persons who seek to transform the trade union into technical Industrial relations interest groups minus any political content, or who insist that trade unions should only be concerned with productivity and professional development and abandon worker protection.
Only as recently as August 26th of this year, we saw elements of a combination of all of these tendencies, when at a panel organised by the Democratic Labour Party under the theme An Evolving Industrial Relations Climate in Barbados: The Way Forward, speakers Bobby Morris, and my colleague Akhentoolove Corbin carried different versions of the same anti-Union message. First it was Morris who, according to the Barbados Today reports that I read, declared that a National Strike is tantamount to a civil war. He went on to make the expected claim that the existing industrial relations systems are now obsolete since they are based on a model different from that which exists today: “The industrial relations system is based on whether we are competitive, productive; and we cannot get away from having a strong discourse on how we are going to put on the front burner, the issue of industrial relations and competitiveness.”
After his likening of a national strike to a declaration of civil war, he went on to make the usual authoritarian declaration so familiar among Caribbean state managers: “We have to look at that public sector to see what needs to be done in order that it does not become a problem and a burden in terms of the maintenance of peace in Barbados.”
Poor NUPW, BWU, and BUT. Poor Casswell Franklyn and Mary Redman, enemies of the state. All potentially guilty of treason. You know the saddest part of all of this? It is that this is narrow partisan opportunism masquerading as deep and objective academic reflection on the future of industrial relations in Barbados. One flip of the electoral result and you hear a completely different discourse on the need for labour to resist government exploitation.
Next was my dear friend and cherished colleague Eddie Corbin, who whilst I cannot accuse him of political opportunism, I can describe as being politically naïve and, I can accuse him of making the common error of many academics, of offering technical solutions while being oblivious to their political and philosophical consequences. Eddie for his part did not declare war on the union movement, but recommended to the teachers unions in particular, that they should focus now on their concern for the education system, the teaching methodologies. Are they relevant? They have to be concerned that we spend millions of dollars on education, but only two schools get 90 percent of Barbados Scholarships and Exhibitions. Unions need to evolve beyond just negotiating conflict to be part of the development process.
You see the confusion. One is accusing the unions of fomenting civil war, while the other one is inviting the unions to become an extension of the policy arm of the Ministry of Education. Both however, wish to see the trade unions stop focussing on agitation.
It is as if everyone is now falling over themselves to discourage you from being trade unionists. I am willing to bet that at least one of the panellists who was busy telling you to improve your technological and pedagogical skills instead of being trade unionists, does not know how to use power point. And it is not Eddie. What business does a former teacher who last left the classroom sometime in the 1980s, have telling Twenty-first Century educators about the use of technologies and the adoption of new pedagogical methods. We live that reality every day.
In fact, if one were trying to find the profession which was nearest to slavery in terms of the totalizing nature of the job, its absorption of every aspect of the human makeup from the physical, intellectual and the emotional, and not to mention the inadequate pay, one would have to settle for the teaching profession. Teachers have no private lives or private time. There is no home time or school time.
In addition, given the current debates about the slide into anarchy and immorality among our youth, more and more demands are being placed upon teachers to conform to societally determined standards of proper dress, conduct and bahaviour, which are not placed on any other section of the working population except Roman Catholic nuns. So teachers cannot even dress appropriately for the beach or jump in crop over bands.
It is therefore insulting to your intelligence as teachers, and disrespectful of your self-sacrifice as human beings, when public officials with claims to trade union and industrial relations expertise, seek to deepen your exploitation, rather than to advance your liberation.
Too many persons are busy seeking to overturn the essential purpose and mission of the trade union movement. This is why my talk is entitled:
Are We No Longer Allowed to Be Trade Unionists? Mobilisation, Creative Resistance, Solidarity and Consciousness: Trade Unionism Now More Than Ever.
I have chosen this topic in order to warn you against participating in our own self-negation. Indeed, when I saw the theme of your Teacher’s Week celebration, I was wondering whether you had been so overwhelmed by neo-liberalism that you had capitulated by adopting the language of the business sector and whether you were ashamed of the lingua franca of trade unionism.
Your theme, “Building the Capacity of Unions through Partnership, Innovation, Networking and Education” sounded more like the theme for a business conference than that of a worker’s movement. Hence the reason why I am asking “Are We No Longer Allowed to Be Trade Unions?”
What I have tried to do therefore, is to preserve the essential message of your theme, but to paraphrase the language from bourgeoisspeak to unionspeak, in order to demonstrate that we have a purpose and language of our own, and that we should resist the imposed redefinitions of others who are seeking to negate our essence as organisations of the working people.
Thus what your theme calls partnership I have called mobilisation and solidarity, what you call innovation I have called creative resistance, what you call partnership and networking I call solidarity and what you call education I refer to as consciousness building. My central argument will be that since the Trade Union Movement was at the vanguard of establishing the social-democratic nature of the Caribbean independent state, then in this moment of the crisis of the post-colonial order, you should be deepening you role as vanguard in defence of social democracy not retreating from it, as your enemies are advising you to do.
Aims of Paper
The rest of my talk this evening will therefore take the following approach. Given my main concern that you are now confronting forces which are seeking to negate your very existence as trade unions, the main theme running through my talk will be to highlight what your enemies are insisting that you should become, and what you should be doing to build capacity as you put it, and for self-preservation and creative resistance as I put it. While I agree that some adjustments to your modus operandi are necessary, my recommendations will be intended to strengthen you in your role as vanguard in defence of social-democracy and worker protection, rather than, as is being advised by others, to make you adjust to neo-liberalism.
I therefore propose to do only two things, and I promise to them very briefly. First, since I am asserting that the present moment of neo-liberal hegemony now presents the concrete possibility of the negation of trade unionism, I will highlight key features of this now dominant neo-liberal ideology and its specific impact on your existence as a trade union.
Secondly, using the aims which we have identified in your theme, I will be presenting a counter-positon to the Morris and Corbin-type proposals that you heard earlier and I will suggest alternative approaches which are motivated by the need to ensure your genuine capacity building and self-preservation, rather than your negation and extinction.
So now, let us examine this neo-liberalism.
Neo-Liberalism and the Challenge to Trade Unionism
One of the real dangers facing the existence of our trade unions as we know them, is the extent to which neo-liberal ideology has destroyed the social-democratic economic and political framework of the post-colonial state, in which trade unions had played central and critical roles. While it is customary to celebrate Caribbean independence as we will shortly be doing in Barbados, it is too often easily forgotten that it is our trade union movements which played the most crucial role in the formation of our states as sovereign, independent and social-democratic.
It should never be forgotten that it is the role of trade unions as tools of national mobilisation and as vanguard in providing the intellectual and activist leadership of our decolonisation projects that determined the social democratic nature of the new states. This is why it is always laughable when the leaders of our political parties presume to lecture our trade unions about their roles in modern society. I always see this as a case of the child trying to straighten out the parent. It is even more laughable when trade unions forget their own history and make themselves servants of the political parties at the expense of the interests of their membership.
Many writers have pointed to the fact that much of the legitimacy of the post-colonial Caribbean state is dependent on its adherence to social democracy. This is why our union leaders cannot justifiably be accused of treason, since they are the legitimate defenders of social democracy. Jorge Dominguez for example, has noted that among the central features of the Caribbean “state-society” bargain was the internal democracy and the social welfarist orientation of Caribbean states, which has thus far been reflected positively in the Caribbean’s relatively strong performance on human development indices.
According to Domínguez this,statist bargain on behalf of democracy sought to provide gains for the great many, the worker and the business owner, while exporting the costs of running such states to the international community via commodity prices or foreign aid. Parties were the institutional brokers for such distributive politics; allegiances to them depended to a large degree on the expectation of particularistic benefits. These states by and large did not threaten the society's habits of resistance in religion, language or property ownership.
A significant feature of West Indian nationalism was the role of the mass democratic party as the vehicle through which these objectives were pursued. These parties were directly supported by labour unions, out of which sprang their mass bases and political ideologies. It is this relationship which placed the notion of “political unionism” at the centre of the West Indian nationalist experience. Political unionism, in its alliance between middle-class leadership and black working class mass support, embodied a central feature of the later state-society “social contract”. Political unionism satisfied the aspirations of the middle-class to positions of governmental and bureaucratic authority and met working class demands for democratic participation. It also ensured that the working class inherited a leadership sensitive to its economic and social aspirations. According to Johnson (1980, 161), the trade unions, by entering into a far-reaching “social contract” with the political parties, declared a systemic commitment… to support them in exchange for some control over economic and social policy. The merger provided the political leaders with the power they needed to negotiate for independence.
Through political unionism, the nationalist leadership was able to convince the working masses that “the winning of complete political independence would provide the colonial economy with the opportunity to adopt a broad program of social and economic reform” (Johnson 1980, 159).
Similarly, Moskos and Bell (1964, 18) argue that whilst the “basic imprints of the nationalist movements always reflected its middle-class origins, it was only with lower class support that it became possible to transform older notions of the legitimacy of the imperial order into a belief in the sovereignty of the West Indian people”. It is the role of the trade union therefore which ensured the political parties of working class support, and it is the trade union movement which gave the Caribbean state its social democratic character. As committed trade unionists, we should not let anyone forget that.
It should be noted that the rise in the power of trade unions to shape the Caribbean post-colonial project was taking place within a particular global framework that was conducive to the internal self-determinaton of formerly colonised states. Among the key features of this permissive global environment included, the presence of the Cold War which created room, through non-alignment, for small states to manoeuvre and extract maximum advantage. In economic terms, the former colonial powers’ responsibilities towards their former colonies were reflected materially in preferential trade arrangements which provided some breathing space for domestic growth and development. In philosophical terms, the environment was supported by perspectives which viewed independence and self-determination as positive things.
The real basis for the crisis of development which the Caribbean currently faces resides in the fact that between the late 1980s and the present, most of the social, economic, political, geo-political and ideational foundations at both a global and local level, which had sustained the post-colonial order, have been progressively reversed and have been replaced by a now hegemonic neo-liberal framework. Given the role which the trade union movement played in the making of the West Indies independence movement, it is no accident then, that in the current era of neo-liberal reversal and overthrow of the West Indian independence project that the trade union movement would be among the earliest targets.
A close examination of the dominant philosophical assumptions of neoliberalism suggest strongly why they are inherently disruptive to the stability and legitimacy of the post-colonial state, and why trade unionism is now being challenged as neo-liberalism becomes hegemonic and taken-for-granted. Among the principle assumptions of neo-liberalism include:
The privileging of private capital over the social good:
The implications of this for trade unionism are obvious, particularly given your existence as organisations designed to secure benefits for workers and the non-owners of capital
The privileging of the individual over the social. Margaret Thatcher: “There is no such thing as Society”. The union is a social organisation, founded on the principle of solidarity and practice of collective bargaining. Any privileging of the individual over the social has the effect of undermining the principles of collective action upon which the union is founded. Is it any wonder then that Caribbean governments are now busy setting up industrial courts and tribunals as the new framework for industrial relations? The idea is that industrial disputes are now individual disagreements between singular employer and singular employee. There is no such thing as society, so they are now telling us that we should let paid lawyers replace the collective action of the trade union. So what happens to sections of the working class that cannot afford to hire legal services?
The idea that the state should retreat from the economic sphere and should confine itself to security and labour regulation (Historical reminder: Security and labour regulation were the two key functions of the colonial state).
This has specific implications for public sector unions not only in ideological terms but in practical terms as well. In a context where the state is among the largest employer this has opened the door for massive layoffs, posing a tremendous challenge for the unions both in terms of the depletion of their membership as well as in terms of false ideological claims of “private sector led growth” upon which these tendencies are based.
The so-called end of ideology upon which is established the assumption that all other options are closed. Margaret Thatcher’s TINA – “There Is No Alternative”. This has de-legitimised politics as a sphere of engagement (There is only one correct perspective and you are too ideological or you are a trouble maker if you disagree). This too has posed an ideological challenge to the existence of unions since, by declaring the existing practices as closed, any alternative premised on social protection, rights to employment, and the protection of living standards of the majority by direct state intervention, are delegitimised as false. It is in such a context that people are busy trying to define and redefine a new set of roles for the union, and why technical Industrial Relations advice is being offered to the unions, while denying them a political role.
The death of Politics: The assumption that all major political questions have been resolved and the only role left for politics is “administration”. The main consequence is the collapse of democracy since the legitimate sphere for public dissent is now closed. No wonder some are now speaking of containing public sector unions in the name of peace. Trade Unions too are being forced into this narrow straight Jacket of technocratic industrial relations. We saw this laughable stance in the recent national strike over the BIDC layoffs, when the NUPW was being accused of conducting a political strike. Even more laughable were the ones who were asking the NUPW to say how many members of its executive were schooled in industrial relations practice, as if the issues surrounding the laying off of workers were technical ones rather than political ones. It was for this reason that I wrote an article in my column in which I unapologetically explained why the strike should, of necessity have to be a political strike, and I insisted that the response to neo-liberalism can only be overtly political and not technical. In other words, the unions did not have to be ashamed, nor did they have to apologize for calling a political strike.
The sacrificing of democracy and political legitimacy for economic objectives of private capital accumulation or “getting the economy right”. Indeed many of the neo-liberal ideologues reduce “legitimacy” to “getting the economy right”. This has also delegitimised our union movements in that they are being called to participate in this neo-liberal myth “of getting the economy right”. Unions are now afraid to appear unreasonable, since any legitimate demand for wage increases and social protection are now construed by their enemies as, at best, displays of irresponsibility, and at worst and acts of treason. Similarly and relatedly, employers who lay off workers, including the state, are seen as being responsible, since these acts are seen as necessary to get “the balance of the economy right”. Unions are now, in this context, told that they cannot strike. Many of our union leaders now suffer from this false patriotism which ultimately results in their own self-negation since ultimately they place state and capitalist interests over the interests of their members.
The rejection of social welfare and social protection as legitimate responsibilities of the state.
Comrades, I can go on and on. But time does not permit me to go any further and I am sure that I have said enough to show that neoliberalism ideology and practice, if allowed to go unchecked, and worse, if we internalise and accept its claims as legitimate, will result, not only in the destruction of the labour movement, but will bring to an end the social-democratic nature of the post-colonial state.
Let me therefore turn quickly to What Is To Be Done, in response to these epoch-shifting challenges now confronting the trade union movement.
What is To Be Done?: Burning Questions of the Union Movement
It is at this point that I employ your paraphrased celebration theme and I insist on Mobilisation, Creative Resistance, Solidarity and Consciousness, Now More than Ever. Since there are many genuine and well-meaning unionists who accept as truth the Thatcherite doctrine that There is No Alternative, which itself is a condition of false consciousness, my first recommendation is therefore the need for the Union to build political consciousness among its membership.
It used to be a given that a trade union serious about its mission would see itself as playing a role in the political education of their members. Every serious union had its newspaper organ, and the content of the articles would go beyond the narrow economism of the bread and butter issues and local concerns of the union. The articles would always seek to emphasise the international nature of the labour movement by connecting the local issues faced at home to the global workers movement abroad.
This need for working class consciousness, and this nexus between local developments and international politics was a sine qua non of the earliest labour movements in the Caribbean. For my part, during my research on the post-1945 political history of St. Lucia, one of the richest sources of information on the ideas of the early labour movement in St. Lucia, came from the Workers Clarion, an organ of the St. Lucia Cooperative Workers Union. It was published monthly between 1952 and 1958. Later on in the 1970s, I followed the weekly COMBAT, the organ of the St. Lucia National Workers Union and the St. Lucia Civil Service Association. I am sure it was the same for all the major trade unions in Barbados, and the same for all the Caribbean countries. I am not talking here of a union newsletter, I am speaking of a newspaper, sold to the public, but with news stories published and written from the perspective of the union movement.
Now more than ever, there is a younger generation of Barbadian worker in need of proletarian consciousness. Without this, our workers are unable to combat neo-liberalism and are helpless before its ideological claims. Newspapers yesterday, the internet today and tomorrow. That is how you modernise yourselves and make yourselves relevant to the Twenty-first Century. Where are our newspapers, online discussion forums and chat rooms, carrying the counter-ideas to global neo-liberalism? Where were our newspapers reporting on the occupy wall street Movement and the Arab Spring and where are our own news stories explaining the European migration crisis from the perspective of the international labour movement?
And speaking of consciousness building, we have transformed the Labour colleges which were established as part of the process of political education for workers, into technical schools for Industrial Relations Law and practice. Hence we perpetuate the neoliberal error of allowing the technical to override the political. The technical must always be explained politically, otherwise the worker is not fully given all the tools required to combat capital. Just to illustrate, how many workers today understand the historical origin of the eight hour day? Show me the clause in Adam’s Will that gave you the eight hour day. What is the relationship between the eight hour day and the Marxist Labour Theory of Value. How can one be a trade unionist and fail to understand the intellectual weight of the Marxist Labour Theory of Value in demanding from employers the right to a living wage?
Again by way of further illustration, where Bourgeois Economics defines profit as Selling Price minus Cost Price (For Retail) or Sale Price Minus Production Cost (for Manufacturing), only the Marxist Labour Theory explains profit in terms of the criminal ability of the employer to pay the worker a small portion of his actual cost of self-reproduction as a wage. “The fact that half a day’s labour is necessary to keep the worker alive during 24 hours does not in any way prevent him from working a whole day.” In other words, the employer is able to make something out of nothing.
But our workers today, are not provided with political education and consciousness building knowledge, and so they exhibit false consciousness, and adhere to ideological justifications of capital, as if the ideas that legitimise capital are in the interest of workers. Even the leaders of the labour movement now reject Marx. It is as if a Christian were to deny Christ and still make claims to being a good Christian. For my part, I stand ready to assist any union in the Caribbean with this project of Political education. I have attached a draft outline of a possible workshop series as an illustration of my seriousness.
Draft Outline of Worker Political Education Workshop Series
A history of the Labour Movement
The Struggle for the Eight Hour day
Marx’s Labour Theory of Value
A History of the Caribbean Labour Movement
Global Neo-Liberalism and the Challenge to Caribbean Trade Unionism
Staying Relevant: Possible Responses by Caribbean Labour Movement to the Challenges of Global Neo-Liberalism
None of this, you will see, concerns itself with the technical concerns of industrial relations practice.
Creative Resistance
Now what you have called Innovation, Partnership and Networking I call Creative Resistance. I take it by Innovation, Partnership and Networking you are thinking about the kinds of organisational and institutional links which you see as necessary to advancing the work of the trade union movement and for ensuring the protection of your membership in this period of challenge. In this regard therefore, one of the strongest recommendations I will make insofar your institutional links are concerned, is that you should seek to break as definitely, as decisively and as urgently as possible, your historical links with the political parties. Our links to the political parties have entrapped us and damaged us. Whilst we have trumpeted the historical Caribbean tradition of political unionism in ensuring the social-democratic character of our states, we need to come to the urgent realisation that to retain our links as junior partners with political parties in the context of neo-liberalism is to compromise our ability to serve the interests of our members.
As way back as the mid-1970s, the Trinidad intellectual CLR James had been warning against the compromised nature of the neo-colonial state and had been urging progressive movements to assert their independence from the parties and governments with whom they were previously associated. Writing specifically in reference to what was then the up-coming 7th pan-African Conference, James had been warning that the program of pan-Africanism after independence in Africa and the Caribbean, should be totally different meaning to what it had been before independence. Given the compromised nature of the independent post-colonial state in the face of neo-colonialism, CLR James had offered the following piece of advice to progressive movements. Forgive me for quoting him at some length but I do not want us to miss its meaning for our business here today:
"When you look at society today, you know that the national state which began with the United States and the French Revolution, is a total failure... I am saying that when we are writing the documents for the Seventh Pan-African Congress we should go straight forward and say: for us no longer is the national state an ideal… Number Two. There is an African elite in every African territory which has adopted the ways and ideas of Western Civilisation and is living at the expense of the African peasant. And we… must make it clear that the African elite is what we have to deal with, and that the African peasant must be our main focus. Point number three. If we are taking about the elite, then we have to be concerned with the masses of the population. The masses of the population today matter in a way that they did not matter twenty-five year ago."
Now if you substitute the words Pan-African Movement with Trade union movement, and the words African peasants with Caribbean workers you would get the gist of the recommendation which is being offered here. The essential point is that our historical tradition of political unionism is being used by political elites to prop themselves up at the expense of the Caribbean workers, and our union leaders must bring an immediate stop to this by distancing themselves from opportunistic political leaders.
In the current context of IMF structural adjustment and neo-liberal reversal of our historical social democratic traditions, any continuation of the practice of political unionism, can only serve to compromise the unions in their ability to represent the interests of workers. Neo-liberalism, as we have seen imposes upon our states the need for down-sizing, the abandonment of any commitment to the social welfare of workers, and the general reversal of social-democracy. A trade union cannot serve two masters. Unions which serve as the institutional link between political parties and the mass base of the population, in the context of neo-liberalism and structural adjustment, can only transform the union into a servant of capital, at the expense of labour.
In addition, and in keeping with James’s warnings against elitism, our trade union leaders must carefully guard against the attractions of high office. Our leaders must ensure that they do not become too much a part of the post-colonial political leadership, that they find it impossible to disentangle themselves from association with governments when such dis-association might become necessary.
I am sure that the members of the BUT and the BSTU do not need any reminders of this, since they know from experience that having their past union leaders occupy high office in the ministry of education is no guarantee that any benefits will accrue to the trade union movement in any significant way.
It is a troubling feature of our times that many union leaders now see themselves as assisting the state in facilitating neo-liberal adjustment, rather than in leading the workers in opposition to such adjustment. I have actually heard a union leader say in Barbados that one of the signs of progress of the local trade union movement is the fact that the IMF now routinely meets with the unions as part of its normal country visits and this allows the unions to be part of the process of decision making. It is also instructive that during the recent round of public sector layoffs in Barbados the main cry of certain sections of the union movement was not to condemn the layoffs but to complain that the union had not been properly consulted in the process.
Indeed, I would argue further that the much vaunted social partnership in Barbados represents the institutionalisation of the compromised nature of the post-colonial state that CLR James was seeking to warn against. While I appreciate the role of the social partnership as a particular state response in specific moments of crisis, it is an error on the part of the union movement to make it a permanent part of its modus operandi especially when both the private sector and government find it necessary to violate the principle of the so-called partnership when it suits their interest. The labour movement should not be showing more faith in a capitalist device which was intended to contain the labour movement, than the capitalist state is itself showing in its own institution.
In developing new modes of networking, partnership and Innovation therefore, by all means pursue strategies of solidarity with local and regional progressive movements, deepen your fraternal links with sister unions at home and abroad, consider new forms of association with the unemployed and the seasonally employed, but through all of this you must give urgent consideration to freeing yourself from the old political unionism which saw you as handmaidens and footstools of political parties. Indeed, the mid-1990s experience in Barbados where a number of trade unionists on the government benches found themselves severely compromised by the imposed structural adjustment policies at the time, should have given us the earliest signals that the old political unionism had run its course, and that a genuine union leader cannot serve two masters.
I think however that I have said enough. Indeed I might have said too much. I hope however that I have given you enough to reflect upon as we face the ongoing struggles of defending the interests of Caribbean working people in the face of global neo-liberalism. I hope though, that you accept my message in the spirit in which it was intended. That the Caribbean labour movement was in the vanguard of the independence movement, and now, in the moment of crisis and reversal of independence it must be bold enough to re-assert itself to re-take its role as vanguard once again and to defend and advance the sovereign and social-democratic character of the Caribbean independent state. I have every confidence that the BUT can play its role, and I have every confidence that the Barbados Labour movement can reclaim its place as vanguard.
I can only conclude by urging Mobilisation, Creative Resistance, Solidarity and Consciousness - Now More Than Ever. Forward Ever, Backward never.
-Dr Tennyson Joseph is a lecturer in Political Science at the University of the West Indies, Cavehill Campus. He writes a weekly column entitled, 'All ah we is one' in the Tueday edition of the Barbados Nation Newspaper. -
