Unions Verses Employers

Traditional Tripartite Groups - Across the globe National Employer Organizations developed during the late 1800s and early 1900s as a reaction to the strong influence of Trade Union Organizations. This led to the establishment of tripartite organizations, (tripartite meaning the involvement of three parties), comprising representatives of organized employers, representatives of organized workers and representatives of government. These three groups are known as the "social partners" with the International Labour Organization (ILO) being the most recognized tripartite organization in the world.

Union officers commonly represent employees in tripartite groups - even though in many cases only a minority of employees are union members - simply because there are no other organized groups of employees to draw representatives from. In The Bahamas for example, it is estimated that only 12% to 18% of employees are members of unions, yet union officials are the social partners in all Bahamian tripartite groups.

The goal of tripartite organizations is to provide a structure for employers and employees to participate as equal partners with government in socio-economic matters. However, from as early as the 1950s the scope taken on by the tripartite social partners began to be challenged as not being representative of society as a whole. More and more pressure was exerted over the years to include at the table making socio-economic decisions a number of Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) such as environmental groups, human rights groups, equal rights groups, etc. This wider body has become known as Civil Society.

Bahamian Tripartite Groups - To be perfectly blunt and come right to the point, tripartite groups have not been successful in The Bahamas. As a recent example, in September of last year the Hon. Vincent Peet, Minister of Labour and Immigration, formed a truly tripartite committee to review the recently enacted labour legislation. This committee fizzled out after a few weeks because the union representatives did not put any real effort into reviewing the labour legislation.

The failure of the tripartite committee to effectively review the labour legislation led to the Prime Minister, the Hon. Perry Christie, this year forming a Labour Review Commission on the 18th of February with its first mandate being to review the labour legislation. Unlike the tripartite committee established by the Minister of Labour, the Labour Review Commission is more representative of Civil Society. Traditional tripartite representation is present from the Bahamas Employers Confederation, the Bahamas Hotel Employers Association, the National Congress of Trade Unions (NCTU), and the Trade Union Congress (TUC); however additional persons not representative of these groups are also included on the Commission.

Although the Labour Review Commission held its last meeting on the 2nd of April to complete its first mandate of reviewing the Employment Act, Minimum Wages Act, and Health and Safety at Work Act, the Commission's report has not yet been presented to the Prime Minister, although it is anticipated that this will be done this coming week.

In a joint press conference held by the NCTU and the TUC on Wednesday, 16th of April, in a blatant show of bad faith, a representative from each union organization publicly urged government to reject recommendations made by employer representatives of the Labour Review Commission, even though the final report has not yet been presented to the Prime Minister! Although both of these organizations are represented on the Commission, a TUC representative "called on government to block employers' recommendations" while a representative of the NCTU "called on the government to disregard most of the recommendations from the recent Labour Commission."

Misleading The Public - One of the worst social injustices that can be committed is to give people false expectations because of the feelings of disillusionment and disappointment that result when those expectations do not materialize. Many times these feelings turn into resentment, and if an employee has a false expectation of a benefit from his or her employer, regardless of where the false expectation originated, the resentment is usually aimed at the employer. The industrial relations climate in The Bahamas is being soured by at least one union official, Obie Ferguson, president of the TUC, who has been reported in the press making statements that are outright bogus. Three examples of misinformation that appeared in the press are shown below.

9th of January, 2003 - "The 40 hour work week means 35 hours of work and 5 hours of paid lunches." This ruse caused an enormous amount of trouble since even the Department of Labour picked up on it and began to call employers informing them that they had to start paying for the meal periods of their staff. This was not completely cleared up until the 31st of January when the Hon. Fred Mitchell, Minister of Foreign Affairs and The Public Service, was quoted in the press as saying "a paid lunch hour is only included where it is a pre-existing contractual arrangement."

7th February, 2003 - "The International Labour Organization (ILO) requirement is that our lunch break is a part of the general working hours." This ploy was apparently an attempt to shame employers into providing a paid meal period or to persuade government to amend the law to require that meal periods be paid. Mr. Ferguson was publicly challenged by BECon to produce evidence of his statement however no evidence was ever produced. In fact, a search of the ILO Convention database produced a Convention that clearly shows standard hours of work do not include paid meal periods. The Convention states, "the term 'hours of work' means the time during which the persons employed are at the disposal of the employer; it does not include rest periods during which the persons employed are not at the disposal of the employer."

15th April, 2003 - "A Court of Appeal decision means that vacation pay for workers should be boosted by the inclusion of overtime wages." Although Mr. Ferguson went on to say that that the ruling of the Court of Appeal affects every worker in The Bahamas, these misrepresentations failed to mention that the Court of Appeal ruling was based on the Fair Labour Standards Act, which was repealed on the 1st of January 2002. The current Employment Act provides for vacation pay to be based on "basic pay" which as defined in the Act "means the rate of pay of an employee exclusive of all bonuses, overtime payments and allowances." The Court of Appeal ruling also dealt with the issue of limitations, which provides that a trade dispute must be filed within twelve months from the date the dispute arose, so any employee who has not filed a trade dispute on this ground prior to the 1st of January 2003 is ineligible to file a claim.

Social Partner or Adversary - Although union officials have sometimes talked the talk of social partnership, they very seldom have walked the walk of social partnership. The premise of the social partnership is that both parties desire the same end; that end being an efficient, productive, profitable business. The real negotiations are on the employees' benefits and wages as a share of the efficient, productive, profitable business.

The reality is normally far from the ideal. Instead of being concerned about the viability of the business, union efforts seem to be focused on protecting the employment of bad and marginal employees. The big picture is not recognized - replacement of bad and marginal employees with employees who are cooperative and productive will result in the business improving its performance. This allows good employees to gain better terms and conditions of employment. Instead time and resources of the business are used to defend against frivolous and vexing trade disputes that sap the energy of the business.

A clearly adversarial stance was taken by the TUC against BECon in a press statement printed on the 29th of January, 2003, that carried the headline "TUC bashes BECon's 'dishonest' claims" describing the comment made by BECon's president that the reduced work week will decrease productivity by 9% as "intellectually dishonest." Although unions are currently paying a lot of lip service to productivity, if they can't recognize the fact that one of the elements of the ability to produce is time, it makes one wonder what they mean by productivity.

Industrial Unrest And The Economy - The media is reporting news of strikes and threats of strikes. Not only does this give pause to Bahamians who want to expand or start a new business, it must have an effect on the disposition of foreign investors. A recently released statistic shows that unemployment jumped from 6.9% in 2001 to 9.1% in 2002, almost a 32% increase. Can Bahamians - employers and employees alike - afford the unbridled union activism that is occurring in our nation today?

After completing the News Bulletin, a friend emailed an excerpt from the book "Free to Choose", by Milton and Rose Friedman. "Free to Choose" was the best selling non-fiction book of 1980 and has been translated into over two dozen languages. Milton and Rose Friedman had this to say at the conclusion of Chapter 8 titled, Who Protects the Worker?

"When unions get higher wages for their members by restricting entry into an occupation, those higher wages are at the expense of other workers who find their opportunities reduced. When government pays its employees higher wages, those higher wages come at the expense of the taxpayer. But when workers get higher wages and better working conditions as a result of the free market, when they get raises by firms competing with one another for the best workers, by workers competing with one another for the best jobs, those higher wages are at nobody's expense. They can only come from higher productivity, greater capital investment, more widely diffused skills. The whole pie is bigger - there's more for the worker, but there's also more for the employer, the investor, the consumer and even the tax collector."

"That's the way a free market system distributes the fruits of economic progress among all the people. That's the secret of the enormous improvement in the conditions of the working person over the past two centuries."

Professor Milton Friedman was awarded the 1976 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences by The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on the 14th of October, 1976, for his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory, and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy.

Previous Bulletin  ||  2002 & 2004 Index  ||  Next Bulletin

Home  ||  About  ||  Newsletters  ||  Documents  ||  Links  ||  Contact  ||  Site Map