Bahamian Labour Leaders Out of Control

by Larry Smith

"Everyone has the right to work...(and) the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of (his or her) interests." -- Universal Declaration of Human Rights

“Years ago, ordinary people (supported) Labour to get a better life. Now, they understand that freedom and enterprise under law is better than massive government control over industry and people.” -- former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher

The naked threats from labour leaders in recent weeks are much more than mere bargaining positions in advance of what many believe will be an early election.

They represent a hinge of sorts. We are at a point where hard choices must be made about the future of the country. But unfortunately, the mindset of most Bahamian leaders appears locked in the past. - so much the worse for us.

The trade union movement draws its inspiration and power from a long and hard-fought democratic struggle, both in this country and in others. The first Bahamian labour union appeared in the 1930s, when the minimum wage was 4 shillings a day.

Other than slave rebellions, the June 1942 Burma Road riots were the earliest and most violent expression of labour unrest in the Bahamas. At the time, workers were demanding a few shillings more per day to help higher-paid Americans build the Windsor Field airport.

The dispute spun out of control, and hundreds marched downtown to smash windows and harangue the authorities. Eventually, they were subdued by troops. Three men were killed, some 40 injured, and 80 were later hauled before the courts.

Labour leaders were, of course, accused of instigating the protests for their own advantage. But a British commission of inquiry identified political and economic inequities as the chief causes. It called for an income tax, death duties, restrictions on land sales and efforts to slow Out Island migration to ‘overcrowded’ Nassau.

New labour laws were also recommended, and a Trade Union & Workman’s Compensation Act was passed the following year. While this allowed the registration of unions, strikes that threatened the government were outlawed. And large numbers of people – including civil servants, hotel workers and farm labourers - were prevented from joining a union.

A decade or so later, in January 1958, Randol Fawkes of the Bahamas Federation of Labour and Lynden Pindling of the newly-minted Progressive Liberal Party led a 17-day general strike that was sparked by a blockade of the airport by taxi drivers.

The taxi union, led by Clifford Darling, was protecting its turf against preferential competition from big tour bus companies – a dispute that still resonates today. But because of the racial emnity of the time, there were fears of unrest and troops were called in again, although this time they remained in their barracks.

The general strike allowed the PLP to flex its muscles and applied enough pressure to generate some visible reforms, as well as protecting the taxi men’s livelihood. A new Trade Union & Industrial Conciliation Act updated our labour laws and established a government board that later became the Ministry of Labour.

Not satisfied with this, Randol Fawkes left the PLP and formed his own Labour Party, leading some unionists to split with his federation and form the PLP-aligned Trade Union Congress. Despite being named labour minister in the first PLP government, he remained an independent gadfly for the rest of his political career and died in 2000.

The other significant labour struggle in our recent history was the 1981 teachers strike. This seminal event was instigated by the studied indifference of the once-reformist PLP regime, then at the height of its power. The teachers union stayed out for three weeks, demanding better pay and conditions, with the government claiming that the strike was illegal.

Following a showdown between union leader Leonard Archer and the late Sir Lynden Pindling, Archer was “retired in the public interest” (although he later made a comeback as our ambassador to Caricom). There were serious issues of free speech and democracy involved in this unrest, which continued for two years. Even high school students boycotted classes and demonstrated in Rawson Square.

This strike doesn’t quite fit with the jingoistic PLP version of history, which claims a direct line of descent for every progressive movement in the country. There is no doubt that the party at first expressed the resentment of most disenfranchised black Bahamians in the face of a powerful white elite. But once in power, PLP leaders rapidly morphed into a caricature of the oligarchy they had fought to displace.

During the 1980s, the PLP’s efforts to monopolise labour support led to another split in union ranks. The powerful hotel union (led by pro-government toadies) broke away from the more dissenting Trade Union Congress and formed its own umbrella organisation. The two groups have since built a strategic alliance, spurred by their mutual dislike of new labour laws introduced five years ago.

For most of our history, labour relations in the Bahamas followed developments in the United Kingdom – albeit at a great distance in both miles and years. The British trade union movement dates back to the 1860s, and union leaders there called a general strike in 1926, in response to wage cuts by coal mine owners.

Current British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Labour Party was the main opposition at the time. The strike lasted for nine days - until union leaders backed down rather than take matters to another level.

This nail-biting face-off was repeated in the 1970s. And although it may be difficult to recall today how much power British union leaders wielded at that time, the fact is that successive Labour governments sucked up to union chiefs while Conservative governments were humiliated by them – to equal effect. The situation is similar here, except both parties suck up to, and are regularly humiliated by, the unions.

The British government invoked the Emergency Powers Act no less than five times between 1970 and 1974, in the face of strikes by dockers, power workers and the first national miners’ strike since 1926. But this time it was the government that backed down. Prime Minister Edward Heath went on to call an early election on the issue of "Who runs the country?", and lost.

But the Labour government that replaced him had to contend with the famous winter of discontent. Public sector workers were on strike for weeks – truckers, railwaymen, hospital workers, even the catering staff at the House of Commons. There were uncollected mountains of trash in the cities and bodies remained unburied.

By this time, most people were fed up, and the 1979 election became a referendum on the old mixed economy consensus. The perception that union power was out of hand led to Margaret Thatcher’s victory and a major historical turning point. Among her first fights was a struggle against Britain's out-of-control unions, which had destroyed three governments in succession.

“The government dug itself in, to varying degrees, on a series of strikes, eager to establish by demonstration effect that the union leadership could not do anything it wanted,” wrote Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislav in their book, The Commanding Heights. “It also got critical legislation through parliament limiting the ability of the unions to turn every disagreement into a class war.”

Thatcher stopped workers from blockading factories, ports, and public bodies during disputes. Strike ballots were made compulsory. The closed shop, which forced people to join a union if they were seeking employment in a particular trade, was outlawed.

So in 1984 the defiant miners leader called a celebrated national strike - without a ballot. After a year the exhausted miners returned to work, and British unions went into a steep decline, losing their power, influence and millions of members. Thatcher then set about cutting public spending and privatizing inefficient state-owned industries. By most accounts, the strategy worked:

“British Airways, an embarrassingly slovenly carrier that seldom showed a profit, was transformed into one of the world's best and most profitable airlines. British Steel, which lost more than a billion pounds in its final years as a state concern, became the largest steel company in Europe...The improvement in British Telecoms performance has been greatest since 1989, when it began to face far greater competition.”

Many would argue that our position in the Bahamas today is broadly similar to that of Britain’s in the 1980s. Union leaders strenuously opposed updated labour legislation introduced by the Ingraham government in 2000, even though business leaders were mortified at the bills. Unionists forced the government to withdraw the one bill that would have made them more accountable. And they continue to blackmail us with strikes, slowdowns and walkouts over inconsequential grievances.

The government, for its part, continues to pander to union power, jeopardising the country’s economic and social stability, and mortgaging our future. The great democratic struggles of the past are now merely camouflage for attack campaigns that seek reactionary veto power over any change that could threaten the income and influence of union leaders.

As TUC president Obie Ferguson said recently, "We must ensure that what we have worked for in the last 50, 60 years remains intact. We are not going to be a part of the system that's going to take us backward."

Don’t worry, Obie, the inertia of successive governments in coming to grips with these central issues ensures that the Bahamas will remain as backward as you want. The authorities don’t even have the will or imagination to fix the Montagu mess, where a handful of people hold half the population of the island at ransom – including thousands of inner city residents for whom the area is their only recreational outlet.

Meanwhile, the 25,000 plus civil servants and utility workers who sit on our backs drawing down most of the nation’s revenue while producing less and less in return is just the most obvious tip of the iceberg. Surely it is time to draw a line in the sand. Union leaders are unaccountable, out of touch with reality and, some might say, out of control.

It remains to be seen whether any Bahamian government can exercise the kind of leadership that is needed to secure our future and transform this country into a modern state. Some very tough questions need to be addressed, but do you think we will hear anything about them at the upcoming political conventions?

Comments

[erica]

can you tell me the labour leader of bahamas