Strike threats and party confab

Martin Henry, Contributor

There was no general strike last week. And today the People's National Party (PNP) closes its 72nd annual national conference which ran over the weekend. The promise of a general strike was driven by despair, and the party conference has hope as a key organising feature.

Both the modern political system and the trade union movement had their origins in the labour unrest of 1938, the same year the PNP was established. And both, with their strange and close intertwining, have made significant positive - and negative - contributions to the formation of Jamaica as we know it today.

Both the threat of a general strike and the PNP conference - significant national events, have been overshadowed by the intense media focus on the faults and failures of the ruling Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the unpopular government it forms. The PNP could hardly have intended, or expected, that its own intense focus on its opponent in government would have so dramatically shifted public attention from its own conference of hope, which has as one of its primary goals, rallying in preparation for assuming the reins of government.

Its opponent in government stumbles from one crisis to another without this translating into any strong resurgence of support for the Opposition party.

This apparent paradox of politics, in fact, has a simple explanation: Jamaicans have grown increasingly distrustful of, cynical about, and disengaged from the political system created by the two political parties which have alternated in government, roughly equally since Universal Adult Suffrage and Internal Self-Government in 1944. The hope and enthusiasm which accompanied the launch of the PNP and carried over into Independence have faded away. The people despair over their unsavoury alternatives. And many, as fellow columnist, Garth Rattray puts it, "resign from Jamaica".

Whatever their distinguished contributions, the political parties have become part of the problem. And it will take a lot more than a weekend party conference to rekindle the hope of '38 and '62. Nor is governance helping. By its bungling, corrupt practices and breaches of promise, the Government and the party which forms it have destroyed enormous amounts of hope and trust. Rehearsing the similar sins of the past administration, and there were many over the 18 and a half years, offers cold comfort.

Mistakes

Two of the biggest mistakes made by the present administration must be the mishandling of public-sector labour relations and the mishandling of the Chistopher 'Dudus' Coke extradition matter - both of them inherited. The inheritance goes back, though, much further than the faults and failures of the administration it replaces. In fact, it goes back to the formation of the modern political system, with the establishment of the PNP in 1938 and the JLP in 1943.

One of the negative results of the close alliance of political parties and labour unions from the founding is the extraordinary degree to which the public service has been forced by its political masters to be an absorber of labour, unproductive labour in 'mek work' (non) jobs. A critical index of this state of affairs is failure to make improvements in productivity, and in instances, to suffer decline. Fingers are too readily pointed at the private sector for the productivity stagnation the country has experienced, but government is the largest employer of labour and commands the biggest slice of the gross domestic product.

Indeed, the party-affiliated unions were idly boasting to media that over 100,000 workers could be involved in the general strike. Mobilising those numbers would be a miracle of the first order. Many public-sector workers, perhaps most, realise that their backs are against the wall, and there are clear signs of their willingness to defy the leadership of their weakened unions.

In passing, the last general strike against a JLP government was in 1985 when deputy prime minister, Hugh Shearer, the Bustamante protégé and previously president-general of the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union and himself a former prime minister, sided with the workers against the Government. Edward Seaga, who was then prime minister and is now busy writing memoirs, can attest to that.

Interesting relationship

Such has been the interesting relationship between politics and trade unionism in this country which requires serious exploration as a cause of many of our problems.

The Omar Davies-inspired memoranda of understanding (MOUs) with public sector unions, as everybody who wants to know does, were merely a postponement of the inevitable. 'Run wid it' Davies must have quietly thought, as French King Louis XV said aloud, 'aprés moi le deluge', "after me the deluge".

The stark fact of the matter is that government, in its generality not specifically this administration, cannot continue to retain and expand the public service establishment and to pay wage increases year after year without mashing up the economy in very serious ways. There are really only two options: Pay fewer people more; or pay more people less, in real terms.

The present government has carried on the inherited MOU tradition and has taken far too long to initiate, conduct and conclude its public-sector modernisation programme. Rationalising the public service, raising efficiencies, and trimming staff are painful, but putty postponement will not make it any less so.

Every government since the 1980s has had some sort of public-sector modernisation and rationalisation programme, none of which has succeeded. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), to which we have been now driven again by the sins of the past, is insisting on the Government holding down, indeed reducing the public sector wage bill.

Like any other debtor, the Government has a moral and legal obligation to liquidate its contractual debts to public-sector workers. And should do so forthwith, then, moving right along, make the necessary and overdue realignment of the public-sector wage bill to affordability and necessity.

In between fending off the fallout from Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, the prime minister has found time to announce that the Jamaica Development Infrastructure Programme (JDIP), already mired in charges of corruption, will be a boost to the economy. Properly handled, the scaling down of the public service could have a similar effect, as talents and redundancy money, and training for new lives inject new energy into the battered economy.

The other poorly handled public service staff matter is, of course, the recurring dismissal of senior-management public servants in very cloudy circumstances.

The Coke extradition, out of which the Manatt, Phelps, Phillips sub-issue has arisen, is an inheritance from the gangster politics of the country which goes all the way back to the founding, as I have repeatedly shown in this column, drawing upon an array of sources. 'Dudus' came to maturity both as a man and a don in the course of the last administration. The garrison culture which bred him goes back much further and is a creation of the political parties. At some point in time, the matter would have had to come to a head. Well, it has now.

One of the positive consequences of this nasty mess is that it has opened the door for deconstructing garrisons and garrison culture, and for crime reduction and the improvement of public safety, if the will to follow through can be found and maintained.

The PNP, anxious to return to government, has a case to make for why it is better able to govern, and has uphill, the task of building hope and greater trust. The JLP in government is assisting them particularly well. The Shahine Robinson dual citizenship imbroglio in Northeast St Ann and the Bruce/Brady "cracks in the JLP" could mean that the trumpet may be sounded soon. It is a real pity that we have such poor choices.

And while Golding is pushing term limits for the prime minister as appeasement, the demands of the people for good governance lie altogether elsewhere - and are very well known. In addition to the "we want justice" call carried frequently in the news, the people want now, not tomorrow, or after term limits, or the Charter of Rights, or impeachment, we want now - improved public safety, increased economic opportunity, adequate public infrastructure and public service, and a reduction of the corruption of government.

Martin Henry is a communications consultant. Feedback may be sent to medhen@gmail.com or columns@gleanerjm.com.