The government’s long awaited plan to separate public sector workers from their jobs has finally been announced. During his budget presentation the prime minister stated that 10,000 workers will be let go over a five year period and will save the government 40 to 50 billion Jamaican dollars. The editors of the Gleaner are no doubt happy unless they expected more workers to be let go. They have long campaigned for this, as well as a number of other private sector leaders who have been calling for the public sector to be savaged as Edward Seaga advocated. The IMF has been a little more coy about the whole matter, but they have left no doubt in their very cautious statements that they expected this to happen sooner or later as part of compliance with the agreement signed with the government
Over the past year and half I have had repeated discussions on the Evening Edition (Newstalk Radio) with ALL the leaders of the trade union movement and they have all to a man or woman feigned that they had no indication that cuts were coming, or, as in the case of Lambert Brown (UAWU), contended that should this happen, it will not be so bad because there has been a retraining exercise going on to take care of those workers who might be let go. Brown went as far as to admit on IMPACT with Garfield Burford (5/11/2011) that he agrees with a restructuring exercise, supposedly to make the public sector more efficient. So in one breath Lambert chides the government over the economy shedding 100,000 jobs in two years of recession, and, at the same time, is expecting these ‘retrained’ workers to be absorbed by the same private sector that is on life support. The other alternative of course would be for them to use their entrepreneurial training to go sell match boxes on street corners.
Words cannot describe the barefaced treachery of these trade union leaders who ought to pay back every cent of the salary they have taken from public sector workers. First of all, like Lambert Brown, they were prepared to accept layoffs on the dubious grounds of efficiency forgetting that having a job is a human right. Secondly, they lied publicly when they said that there would be no layoffs; and thirdly, they betrayed the workers by not giving them a chance to express themselves on the pending layoffs. Anyone who takes the time to talk to public sector workers would discover how scared they are of losing their jobs, and hear their bitter complaints about the lack of communication and forthrightness from their trade union leaders.
Up to when information minister Daryl Vaz said not long ago that massive layoffs were pending, these misleaders continued to play their deceptive game by running to finance minister Audley Shaw to get clarification. Shaw of course told them what they wanted to hear -- that no such layoffs were pending. This blatant lie they then used as a fig leaf to go on giving false comfort to public sector workers that there would be no layoffs. As late as last week they were saying the same thing on Cliff Hughes’ programme.
The IMF agreement calls for a cut in the public sector yet they chose to ignore it. Lambert Brown regularly has ‘teacher’ Ralston Hyman on his Evening Edition programme, and Hyman has made no bones about the fact that cuts were coming. Did what ‘teacher teacher’ have to say alarm Lambert Brown? No, because he agrees with restructuring, and more importantly, he has his faith in the market system.
This treacherous path started as far back as the MOUs signed with Omar Davies and continued with the same game playing under Audley Shaw. Imagine, Wayne Jones, president of the Civil Service Association, a crucial trade union member of the Public Sector Transformation Unit (PSTU) who up to when Golding announced the cuts was pretending to be deaf, dumb and blind to everything happening around him. (How come Peter Moses was more aware of what the whole exercise was about?) Maybe Jones does have these intellectual and physical challenges – but under such conditions honesty would dictate that he has no business representing civil servants, and should give back every cent he received from that body. Not even his Vice President Robert Chung has the faintest idea as to what went on in these PSTU meetings (much more the Joint Confederation of Trade Unions) and how the figure of 10,000 job cuts was arrived at. What a mystery!
So what is the solution of these misleaders? --or eunuchs as Ronnie Thwaites calls them. ‘More meetings’ says Vincent Morrison (on IMPACT), ‘more meetings’. Another tried and tested way of parading their impotence. They are always hankering after meetings even though Audley Shaw has already told them that he cannot make blood out of stone.
I challenge the eunuchs. Call your workers to mass meetings and let them decide the way forward. Enough of your cowardice and deception.
Audio
Lloyd D'Aguilar
Campaign for Social and Economic Justice
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