A SOCIAL CONTRACT OR A SOCIAL COMPACT?

Jan 07, 2014 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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A few hundred years ago, some political theorists devised various concepts of a social contract. The purpose of these theories was to argue a case for the legitimacy of the State.
People are still today arguing and fighting over the legitimacy of the State. Despite all of these social contract theories, any and all excuses have been found to question the authority and right of the State over its subjects.
About a decade ago, Barbados was advised by its multilateral financiers to have a social compact between the government, the private sector and labour. Barbados went ahead with its social compact. This process so impressed some of Guyana’s local captains of business that they began to tout the social compact as a model that Guyana could imitate.
Barbados for all its experiments with a social compact is now facing the threat of having to send home some three thousand public sector workers. The same threat hangs over Jamaica.
APNU has proposed a social contract in Guyana. Its idea of a social contract is not the same as the social contract theorists who outlined their ideas of what the relationship should be between citizen and State. APNU’s social contract is more about a relationship between the political parties, the private sector, labour and the government. It has nothing to do with legitimizing the State, but rather is built around the model of a social compact which has acquired such a notorious reputation. APNU’s social contract sounds a lot like a social compact.
The social compact was a creation of the multilateral twins, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Its aim was not to promote cooperation amongst political parties, labour and the government. Rather, the underlying reason for the social compact was to bring labour into the vice of the private sector and the government as a means of suppressing wages in the economy. This is what the social compact was about. It may have seemed to be inclusive, but it was intended to exclude labour from making demands, especially during periods of structural adjustment.
The social compact was a means of having labour making voluntary restraints on wage demands so as to support the process of stabilization and neo-liberal reforms. This is what the social compact was about.
When APNU therefore speaks about a social contract, it raises the frightening spectacle of a social compact, a process of dialogue between labour and the government, but involving the private sector. The only difference is that APNU adds the political parties to the fray.
It is ironic that APNU should now be urging a process that involves dialogue with the private sector. It has hammered the private sector in recent times and in 2012, one of the Regions that it controls actually refused to have the private sector sit in at a meeting aimed at resolving the crisis in Linden.
APNU is telegraphing its ideas from outer space. They are not grounded in Guyana’s realities. By now APNU ought to know that the greatest obstacle to increased public sector wages is not the government but the private sector. The Year of the Workers is not as APNU believes 2014. It was in 2013 when the government made regulations that allowed for a minimum wage throughout the country and one that compels all employers to pay overtime for weekly work in excess of forty hours.
This was the most progressive working class measure ever implemented in Guyana. Period! And do you know who the principal opponents of this measure were? It was the private sector. The minimum wage created pandemonium within the ranks of the private sector, because they had grown accustomed to public sector wage restraints that helped to suppress wages in the economy.
And they have benefited more than anyone else from the raising of the income tax threshold. In fact, they have supported the increase in the income tax threshold, because it allows them to increase the disposable income of workers at the expense of taxpayers.
If APNU is serious about its declaration about the Year of Workers, it must stand on the side of workers, beginning with passing a motion calling for a living wage. It has passed all manner of motions. It knew when it was passing these motions that these were non-binding on the administration. However, as a deliberative body, the National Assembly promotes debate on issues, and the passing of motions of national issues is one way of debating issues.
A living wage cannot be achieved overnight. There has to be a progressive movement towards a living wage. APNU needs to support the establishment of a committee to determine a living wage in Guyana and then to urge the government to move public sector wages progressively towards this living wage.
Is this too much to ask for a grouping that has declared 2014 as the Year of the Workers?

 

 

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