Today is about the workers

May 01, 2019 Editorial

It is a day to observe and celebrate. To remember those who made many hard sacrifices, including the ones who made the supreme sacrifice in a long struggle for a better life, a deeper sense of self-esteem, and a more progressive working environment. That struggles continues on this Labour Day.
The forces are arrayed on the other side, often in potent resistance, sophisticated manipulations, and just plain neglect. Those forces range from the foreign to the local; and in the latter, there is the presence, to different degrees and at different times, of both the private sector and Government.
First, there was Rusal. The company came all the way from a far side of the world, extracted every rich concession it could squeeze, and partnered with a compliant state to deny workers their due, including the ignominy of not even a hearing.
There was no listening almost ten years ago, and history was about to repeat itself with a successor government. It was not to be; but it only came about after considerable tensions, anxieties, menaces, outrages, and then some modicum of capitulation.
The basic decency of recognition comes only with grudging reluctance and much bitterness in the blood. It is the 21st century. The struggle goes on.
Then, there was the protracted impasse and ordeal of the teaching profession. It could be advanced, with some fairness, that the teachers’ representatives did demand too much, perhaps as part of standard negotiating ploys.
They did get somewhere, but only after resorting to the street, upping the rhetorical temperature, and relentless commitment to holding the lines, the lines that were believed to be in the best interests of the underlying constituent: educators.
Unsurprisingly, the taste of bad faith seeped into the relationships and conversations related to negotiations. It was exacerbated by the fact that it was Government that was the adversary in this instance; one that proved to be almost as dogged and ferocious as the foreign one in the bauxite sector, and one sometimes nearly as uncooperative.
There is a lot of salt and acid to spread around on this one and on both sides. It is over now; except that it is not fully so. Hopefully some lessons were learned. The scents of battle linger.
On this Labour Day, there is the sharp issue of worker abuse that encroaches in the work environment. It is a two-way highway that is well traveled. On the management side, there are the settled perceptions and real experiences of worker malaise, worker inefficiency, and continual worker breaches of their part of the bargain in terms of responsibility and delivery.
Further, recognized agents, unions, are less of fellow strivers and more of determined foes. These are age old, and not without some merit in some instances. From the workers’ perspective, the abuse roams from the blatant to the subtle.
The former could be as basic as overtime pay or expected courtesies; the latter, it has been alleged, assumes the irrefutable outlines of the discriminatory and the subjective and qualitative, as in performance reviews or sick leave reception.
Still further, it is 2019 and workers in some private businesses complain futilely of one hardship after another imposed by owners and their agents, through unilateral elimination of amenities, disregard of safety requirements, and generally poor working and benefits conditions.
Many are the cries of little satisfaction from Labor; so, too, are the continuing dissatisfactions with some businesses.
More businesses are promised: overseas oil arrivals and domestic petroleum patriots. In that confluence, every effort must be expended so that local workers get their due. That will be another struggle.

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