Retain redundancy law, say unions
Published:Tuesday | September 6, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Gary Spaulding, Senior Gleaner Writer
The local trade union movement yesterday reared its head in a collective show of rejection of a proposal to wipe Jamaica's redundancy law from the books and replace it with a national policy of unemployment insurance.
Any difference that might have existed among high-profile trade unionists evaporated in the presence of tax expert Ethlyn Norton Coke's proposal that redundancy laws must be expunged.
"Thank God for Hugh Shearer and Michael Manley," declared veteran trade unionist Vincent Morrison as he flicked away the proposal.
Lambert Brown, the president of the University and Allied Workers' Union, was characteristically candid in his rejection of the proposal.
Backward position
Describing the proposal as an echo of the sounds emanating from the banking and other industrial quarters, Brown characterised the suggestion as a backward position that was not supported in international best practices and not endorsed by the labour movement in Jamaica.
"The proposal sounds populist, but is foolish and should be soundly rejected," declared Brown.
He also zoomed in on Morrison's sentiment: "But for that 1974 (Redundancy) Act, this country would be in a worse social condition that it is in."
Vice-President of the Jamaica Confederation of Trade Unions Danny Roberts was just as vehement when the proposal was placed before him.
"We are still failing to give primacy to labour as the source of wealth creation, and the need to balance efficiency with equity," asserted Roberts.
Norton Coke's suggestion that the redundancy programme could be replaced by a national policy of unemployment insurance failed to appease Morrison as he vowed that the National Workers' Union would never countenance such a move.
"Until you have something better than the redundancy payment arrangements I can tell you that the National Workers' Union will never support any decision to remove the arrangement as we have it in Jamaica," warned Morrison, president of that union.
"The State does not have money to provide unemployment insurance. As we speak, they can't even find the money to pay seven per cent increase much less to find unemployment insurance," he argued.
Morrison noted that it was Shearer and Manley, two former prime ministers and trade unionists by profession, who carved out the redundancy arrangements and in so doing saved hundreds of thousands of Jamaicans.
"If it wasn't for this redundancy-arrangement legislation, the social leg of the (nation) would be gone long time ago," Morrison declared.
Roberts complained that Jamaica continued to lag behind other countries in its recognition and acknowledgement of the true value of labour.
"We must come to realise quickly that in the context of today's global realities, it is those countries which put workers at the centre of the development process, which promote social dialogue, and provide social protection that are the most competitive," said Roberts.
According to Brown, neither the United States nor Great Britain has been able to afford a similar insurance arrangement. "We cannot even fund the pension scheme. Who is going to fund this, the worker?"