It is true for both the UNC and the PNM that when in Opposition they have all the answers for the problems facing the country, but when power is transferred to their hands it is a different story. I was amazed that former prime minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar should now call for labour laws to be revised nine months after she lost government. What happened during the five years and four months when she was head of government and had appointed a former trade union leader as her minister of labour?
What had her labour minister done in relation to a revision of the Industrial Relations Act; the Retrenchment and Severance Benefits Act (RSBA); the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act; or as she indicated, the Companies Act?
Inadvertently, she casts aspersions on her own government every time she talks about “the urgent need” to establish an unemployment and insurance fund to assist retrenched workers. What was done by the PP government to bring this fund into being?
The 1995-2001 Basdeo Panday administration opened up the discussion on a way forward in dealing with severance for workers thereby, in a sense, by-passing the obstacles in the Retrenchment and Severance Benefits Act.
The suggestion then, was a Service Related Benefit Fund through the Minimum Wages Act contributed by employers. It was put on hold then because of the heavy burden on employers of new labour legislations protecting workers and the fact that oil prices were severely depressed.
Since 2001, neither the PNM nor the PP coalition made any attempt to find a solution to the severance anomaly. The employer class has nothing to lose.
The RSBA protects them from dealing fairly with retrenched workers. So we are back to rhetoric and platitudes from those self-appointed champions of workers like the Leader of the Opposition, the PNM labour minister; the employers and the Keith Rowley government.
Harry Partap
Tableland