The changing world of work

Since its release last week, nobody here has raced to the press to declare enthusiastic interest in the ILO’s latest study on “work-life balance around the world.”

This confirms the view that our leaders in the fields of politics, labour, and business are yet to come to terms with some of the lessons learned through the ongoing pandemic.

Labour unions, whose raison d’etre is rooted in the interests of workers, are among the most negligent of the social actors. Their withdrawal from organised tripartite dialogue in T&T and tragic inability to come to terms with emerging realities sadden many of us.

The ILO report promotes the idea that some of the measures to cope with the disruptions of the pandemic - including but not limited to “telework” - have long-term positive implications for the well-being of most workers.

“Reduced working hours and more flexible working time arrangements, such as those used during the COVID-19 crisis, can benefit economies, enterprises and workers, and lay the ground for a better and more healthy work-life balance,” the ILO says.

The report also speaks to the appropriate and valuable employment of “digitally-enabled” workplaces – once properly applied to regulate time spent on the job.

Those of us who work in the virtual space can attest to the fact that online assignments are not inhibited by workplace commutes and other barriers that are inconvenient even as they help regulate actual time on the job.

The fact is work-from-home regimes can promote increased productivity while creating time for leisure, family, and other interests that lead to a better quality of life. But it can also, if improperly managed, greatly increase time spent “on the job” at the expense of the quality time needed to achieve emotional and physical balance.

Nuanced discussions on such matters ought to be led by our unions and others with an interest in the well-being of workers. But I have heard nothing to suggest any organised interest in such matters, even prior to this interesting ILO report.

This space has repeatedly been used to harp on the excellent opportunities presented by digital technologies and platforms for their deployment. The benefits extend to all stakeholders – from clients to an enabling workforce. The creation of an entire ministry to promote and to pursue the possibilities in the public sector is however yet to make an impression.

To be fair, the benefits of mechanisation have, indeed, profitably pushed industry and manufacturing in the direction of digital possibility and action. But I am yet to see its more wholesome embrace by other business, financial, and commercial sectors – some of which continue to erect digital facades to mask fully manual back-end processes. So many still want a “piece of paper” in their hands – banks, insurance companies, retailers … almost everybody.

It is even worse when it comes to government transactions. We all have our own horror stories. I refuse to hold my breath in anticipation of meaningful change. The digital embrace and its accompanying implications for the world of work in the public sector are not anywhere on the immediate horizon.

The ability to download and manually complete a form does not comprise a “transformation” of any reasonable substance. Change, you see, has the potential to undermine power structures and avenues for wrongdoing.

Where sensible adjustments have been made, they confront the countervailing passion for long lines and delays at public offices.

What, for instance, got in the heads of those who thought online appointments at the Licensing Office could have been withdrawn? The very fact that this had been contemplated tells the story. True, the decision was withdrawn, but think about the mindset that led us in that direction in the first place!

The ILO is meanwhile particularly instructive on the question of “working-time arrangements” including shift work, on-call work, compressed hours and hours-averaging schemes – much of which are anathema to bosses craving shoulders over which to peer.

The report however cautions that “the benefits of some of these flexible arrangements, such as better family life, may be accompanied by costs including greater gender imbalances and health risks.”

So, all of this requires a national conversation and negotiation involving all the social actors including, in my view, people who work but are not aligned to organised labour. It cannot be left to unthinking dismissal by politicians, solely profit-led businesspeople, or unenlightened trade unionists living in the distant past.

A new world of work is unfolding before our very eyes in many places. It’s within our reach. The pandemic, at its deadly peak, provided pathways to the possible. We haven’t embraced them.

 

A duty of social care

Listen here:

It took quite some time researching today’s subject (from my deep archive of enthusiastic appeals spanning decades) to arrive at the conclusion that adaptation to the noise phenomenon is a much more viable option than periodic mitigation efforts – whatever the law, accompanying regulations, or civilised behaviour dictate.

Sadly, I have concluded that the latter strategy to contain and reduce is a lost cause. I am also deliberately using climate change jargon to signal potentially catastrophic impacts – some of which are already quite evident.

A neighbour of mine (a respected professional not typically given to reckless hyperbole) was forced to conclude last Saturday: “I used to think that there was a minority of people in the country holding us back. I have since come to the unfortunate conclusion that it’s the majority.”

As some of us stood, watched, and listened under what appeared to be the shadows of distant Kyiv on Saturday/early Sunday, this particular neighbour messaged his understanding of our homespun tyranny of the majority – a profound take on western democracy’s double-edged sword of representative democracy.

I thank him for it because it explains many things. We need not wonder any more why, despite the Cabinet discussions, parliamentary references, press releases, consultations, and media conferences, no government of the past or present has ever been serious about breaches of laws addressing this issue that they themselves have passed or endorsed - even their application, in spirit, as a form of civic responsibility.

There are few grey areas between what the Summary Offences Act describes as “public nuisance”, the intent of the Explosives (Prohibition of Scratch Bombs) Order of 2018, or the processes associated with the Noise Pollution Control Rules administered by the Environmental Management Authority, among other wastepaper references in our libraries and hard drives.

There has never been any serious effort to address this breach of acceptable human behaviour. None. Standby for more later this year.

I have also not heard anyone argue seriously in favour of the complete abolition of celebratory pyrotechnics. They probably have some value as organised events under set guidelines to assure public safety and wellbeing. I really do not care for them. Close proximity to murderous gunfire permanently impaired my tolerance for it many years ago.

But some believe fireworks and noise-making devices have a role to play in making people happy. Fair enough. And what I have witnessed are simply attempts to encourage public authorities to administer the law, and leaders at all levels to apply codes of public conduct expressive of a duty of social care.

It should really not be that for purposes of adapting to breaches of both principles, we are called to sedate, “lock up”, tie, or otherwise secure our pets to reduce the undoubted harm caused. This, of course, is also not an option for the wildlife whose cruel fate is a routinely under-valued slur on our conduct. One important guide to the level of civilisation reached throughout history, has always been the level of regard paid to the humane treatment of animals and care for other features of the natural environment.

Babies, the aged, disabled, and ill … human beings … are also all expected by some, as is the case with our pets, to be safely quarantined from the noise, if not from fire hazards.

One column I excavated referenced the loss of “moral reliability” when leaders, in all their social manifestations – politics, religion, communal, public authority – consciously turn blind eyes to manifest wrong-doing. In the face of “zero tolerance” pronouncements, what we have witnessed, on this point alone, is the undermining of authority, by the authorities.

I also recall invoking “broken windows theory” – sometimes referenced by criminologists who argue that when a society decides to leave “minor” infractions alone, the foundations for serious crime are reinforced and even tacitly supported by officialdom.

But, as my neighbour suggested, this also extends to an apparently tyrannical majority whose value systems do not extend to a duty of care, and who live with an expectation of impunity.

But it is possible, I once argued, that something can be entirely lawful … yet absolutely wrong.

So, in 2023, as we adapt and prepare to be sedated and self-quarantined against noise and fire attacks, let’s be real. Not that we should allow hope to slip from our imagination, but that we learn more about defending ourselves, especially against ourselves.

The Seerman got it right!

(Published in the T&T Guardian on January 5, 2022)

The Seerman of 2022

I have noticed that, so far in the mainstream media, we have been mercifully spared the views of clairvoyants and mystics on the prospects for T&T in 2022. I might have (thankfully) missed them.

It could be that the usual suspects have chosen other private and public platforms to predict everything from the painfully inevitable to the outlandish designs of omens and dreams.

I have even noticed studious avoidance of satirical projections. This is perhaps out of fear that, at this time, nothing remains out of the realm of the eminently possible.

In the absence of the usual local contributions, and with due respect to our weatherman, Kalain Hosein (who is mostly accurate), I therefore wish to make one simple prediction of my own, having stared long and hard into a Grenadian conch shell:

On December 31, 2022, there will be firecrackers, “squibs”, bamboo bursting, and unauthorised use of fireworks almost everywhere in T&T. Animals will cower and some will die. A house or two will burn. A teenager will suffer injury to his/her hearing/vision. The police will not respond to complaints. A government official will promise yet another inquiry or legislative review. 

This will end 12 months of pyrotechnics at sundry occasions when people decide that the plight of the ill, the aged, the disabled, animals (both wild and domesticated) and other vulnerable groups is not worthy of consideration.

I am almost certain I can take this to the bank because I have been keeping tabs on this issue for decades now. Not one prime minister, minister of national security, attorney general, police commissioner, business chamber or religious community has ever been serious about this.

This is the only available conclusion, following years and years of so-called “zero tolerance” and other forms of public mamaguy.

The parliament even went as far, in 2017/2018 as convening an “Inquiry into the adverse health effects of fireworks” by a Joint Select Committee.

This exercise focused almost entirely on human health, but at various stages in the proceedings captured expressions of concern about private and public property and the plight of animals.

Last week, one social media wag addressed the point about pets as something of an idle bourgeois concern – à la Chinese Cultural Revolution (when keeping pets was banned).

What could possibly be wrong with making noise in your neighbourhood? We did it back in the day. We turned out fine. Hard luck lady who is now unable to walk, boy who lost full vision, homeowner whose property was destroyed, pet owner in search of her lost dog, asthmatic who endured poor air quality for days and days.

This is the “tradition” argument against serious action and the need for an official blind eye turned to collective pathological pyromania in order to preserve “de culture.”

I have heard equally passionate defences of “tradition” from proponents of annual “baby throwing” in India, female genital mutilation in Egypt, and child marriage everywhere. Over here, we more routinely have the burning of houses, the wounding of children, and the harming of defenceless animals as part of our glorious traditions.

The 2017/2018 inquiry made 16 “short-term” recommendations including the identification of “public spaces (recreation grounds and parks) where residents may gather to discharge fireworks under proper supervision.”

There were also 20 “medium-term” proposals that spoke of promotion of “the proper care of animals especially those that are domesticated.” And two “long-term” recommendations addressing the subject of an Injury Surveillance System and an expanded mandate for the EMA’s Policing Unit.

There had been “public hearings” of the JSC on March 15, April 19, and December 15, 2017, before the 201-page Report was laid in both houses of parliament in March the following year.

Five years to the day, and prior to all of this, I used this identical space to script, as fiction, the deliberations of Cabinet on this very subject as key ministers emotionally called for decisive action.

When, earlier this week, I saw the AG promising “public consultation” on some draft Bill or the other as the houses burned and as the injuries were recorded, my seerman pores raised. Here we go again, I thought.

So, on this day, without the candles or the crystal ball, I sadly declare yet another year of mamaguy. I see property damage. I see injuries. I see the haze of smoke and the invasion of peace and quiet. I see animals, of all classes, lost or wounded. I see “tradition” prevailing over good sense, law, and humanity. Forget about this as some kind of prospective victory in 2022.

Ratchifee and unfinished business

You ever looked at a freshly sculptured WASA pothole or mud-mound and wondered what in the inner workings of the human mind/soul/psyche/consciousness could ever conceive of such an act as being even remotely acceptable?

Now, I am not only speaking about the workers and supervisors at the site immediately responsible for the artwork, or the bosses back at headquarters who think it’s all okay, for a week or month or year. But there is a case to be made about our national penchant for vi-ki-vy (let the linguists settle this one … it’s from the French “vaille que vaille”) and ratchifee (the etymology of which appears to be undetermined).

Likewise, what can possibly lead anyone to believe that the ad hoc, vy-ki-vy arrangements for “regularising” the stay of Venezuela immigrants (though they are not the only victims of immigration policy at variance with international law and convention) are justifiable as a way of assuring their integration into T&T society or prospective safe return?

How does anyone - including the “close de borders” crowd of 2019 (who should never be allowed to fade comfortably into the background, however much their messaging changes) – argue in favour of denying the children of immigrants the right (and it is a right under at least one Convention to which we are boastful signatories) to an education?

There is also my continued amazement at the open rejection of digital solutions by politicians, senior public servants and many business leaders to some of the issues that render us prone to inefficiencies, lethargy, and chronically unfinished business.

Make no mistake about it, there is no real commitment to promoting remote work … wherever possible. Not every time and everywhere. Nobody, for instance, advocates work-from-home modus for WASA pipeline replacement. As far as I know, there has been no audit of the possibilities in either the public service or private sector. So, what accounts for the quick resort to “no”?

The prime minister does not believe this can work, and there is nothing sensible on this subject that has been uttered by any of the other political contestants or their numerous surrogates in the public space.

Listen. It was believed by somebody in a position of influence that the online appointment system at the Licensing Offices for drivers’ licence transactions should have reverted to the customary hours-long torture of the pre-pandemic era.

True, this return to arduous “normalcy” did not last long but note that it entered someone’s thoughts (without apparent opposition from Cabinet come down) that an online appointment system that worked should have been eliminated.

It is quite a charge to accuse an entire nation of not only governance by vaps (as a function of the collective body politic) but of considering vi-ki-vy and ratchifee as acceptable in the face of ‘too much to do with too little’, ‘incompetent leadership’, ‘small size’ or a ‘complacent clientele’ (citizens) who won’t fuss too much after initial emotions are fully vented – typically after 10 days of griping.

There are too many other examples for limited op-ed space. But one of the more crippling characteristics of countries in transition from one stage of development to another, is the degree to which citizens are accepting of unfinished, shoddy public business – even as “leave dat jess so” is accepted creed in personal spaces awaiting divine intervention.

This phenomenon spans a causal spectrum including sloppy lawmaking and enforcement, anachronistic public and private leadership, obsessively pragmatic political principles, sleazy partisan favouritism, and a general view that everything will be okay … eventually. So, “leave it so nah.”

“There might be a mound of mud or a big hole, but at least we fixed the leak”; “they t’ief but they performed”, “we give the immigrants time to stay and work, we never talk about children”; “we agreed to the CCJ but not THIS CCJ.” Unfinished business aplenty. Ratchifee. Improvised value systems. Spinning top in mud.

This might all sound funny, and it would probably have been, If not for numerous potentially injurious impacts. Official sloth and procrastination have cost us much in the public health system, policing, public policy, and numerous other areas of national and community life.

There is something that happens to the souls and minds of people who believe that vy-ki-vy, ad hoc decision-making that moves quickly from one bit of unfinished business to the next is somehow acceptable as a way of advancing the development game.

That suspension-bending pothole or mound of mud is barely the tip of a psychic trash pile of unfinished business. It is among the products of ratchifee, vy-ki-vy, and postponement of opportunity.

 

World Cup Identities

Remember two weeks ago I reminded folks that there are at least three main dynamics behind the enthusiasm of Caribbean people for selected World Cup teams? In short - football and self-identity – or a combination of the two.

There is another reason why we may extend support to a team. But at the current rate, T&T and Jamaica have too much work to do to get anywhere close to World Cup qualification in the near future and the others have even more remote ambitions/capabilities.

But, back to reality. The more knowledgeable would have as their first choice the teams that display the greatest skills on the pitch. They know the players. They can name more than three of them on their team of choice, complete with personal and team stats.

These people can also further validate such support through intimate knowledge of the major leagues in Europe and faint but sometimes reasonable acquaintance with what happens in Asia, Latin America, Oceania, and Africa.

But most of the rest of us also have other, non-footballing, reasons to assign support - or a combination of fair knowledge of the sport and a sense that the tournament is much more than a game.

One criterion does not automatically preclude the next. I have a close friend, let’s just call him PR, who backs teams “with more people who look like us” while knowing full well that footballing skills are often lodged in far more monochromatic teams of another hue.

That is where the other question of domestic and international politics enters the field of play. For instance, had Russia been involved in the current tournament, there would have been chaotic scenes at our bars. NATO, US and EU geo-politics, (non-playing) left- and right-wing posturing would have been on open display.

(By the way, did anyone of you note nominally socialist Russia’s defiant defence of free market conditions regarding the price of oil recently?)

This is not to say that legit connoisseurs of the game would also not have sentimental attachments to one team or the other. Those who lived and worked and were schooled in the UK were there, openly or quietly, backing England in front of their Windrush branded screens.

The English commentators who could not contain their enthusiasm, my Trini/UK friend in Colorado, Sycophantic Manu Bro (PR), Shifty OG, and the guys assembled at a Kingston hotel last Saturday still drying tears.

There are also those who fancy a North American destiny and mourned the early departure of the US team … and to a lesser extent, Canada’s.

I also know others who hold to the myth of German “efficiency” and the dated reputation of their impregnable (footballing) defence.

In short, emotions are difficult to attend to at the height of football passion; especially since there is also the question of self-identity. Take today’s match, for instance.

How more conflicted can anyone, from among us be when France (with so many players who look like us and names we know, and the magical Mbappé) comes up against the identity-conflicted Morocco in a World Cup semi-final?

Yes, two weeks ago I called the names Mbappé, Tchouaméni, Dembélé, Koundé and Konaté when declaring second-choice preference for France to win the tournament.

But, like so many others, completely missed the metaphorical opportunities made available by a determined Morocco team that keeps Palestinian flags in its kits and whose Sofiane Boufal described its win over Spain as a win “for the Arab world.” Contrarily, his coach promptly retorted that his team flies the flag of African football high.

It’s a country as much captured by global institutional arrangements – part of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) grouping to capture its duality - African/Islamic – as we are as an incidental attachment to “Latin American and Caribbean” groupings within the UN and other systems.

Yet, in the African/Islamic sense, Morocco is not Senegal or Cameroon - who beat Brazil 1-0 on December 2 - without the current passions now associated with Morocco in T&T.

Interesting, isn’t it? Today’s World Cup semi-final between France and Morocco brings together two teams that tell the story of international affairs in ways we in the Caribbean understand very well.

Yes, it’s football. Yes, there are issues associated with how global administration of the sport is conducted. But football and identity have merged in a hitherto unlikely place. We’re used to that here.

The Tempest and our times

Hopefully, people are noting that amid pervasive sadness and endemic turbulence, our writers, filmmakers, visual and performing artists are producing at a dizzying rate and, in the process, offering sharper awareness of possibilities and glimmers of hope.

The much-maligned young are leading the way in alleviating the multi-dimensional impacts of a failed generation. People still intent on promoting a notion of the same “good old days” that installed the brittle social, economic, and political infrastructure for all we now endure.

None of this is an attempt to diminish the magnitude of the challenges we face, or to suggest an easy solution. Or even to entirely dismiss past gains. But there are real questions related to viability and sustainability whose answers, if there are any, we cannot escape or resist.

There are civilisations far greater than ours over time that have declined, decayed, and eventually disappeared.

One of these days, I propose to put to anyone who pays attention, the suggestion that the required recalibration in how we think, and act threatens convulsions with tsunamic implications for the way politics, religion, law, medicine, engineering, journalism, and public thought and action are currently conducted.

Responses to the incidence of flooding tell us all we need to know about how societies are sometimes prone to self-delusion and myth.

Earnest, truthful interventions will find little space for any of these institutions and vocations in their current conditions. A complete rethink of our engagement of development will become necessary to assure that something resembling a future as a sovereign state remains on the horizon.

For sure, we are not alone in this. Our neighbours are similarly challenged, and we would do well to note the dramatic decline of highly touted exemplars further away. In the end, we may all have to encounter these challenges together, as is the case with resolving the climate crisis. To a great degree, we are not.

But, back to this glimmer of hope thing. I cannot recall a time when creative powers of this magnitude have emerged to counter false assertions of hopelessness. Follow Franka and Soyini and Barbara-Anne and Laura around and you will not survive half their itineraries – and they cover limited ground.

Music, books, art, drama, and dance are everywhere you turn. For some of us, emerging from the Covid cocoon has been slow and deliberate.

For me, there have just been Ramleela, the Independence and other art exhibitions, pan has resumed (and I have followed from some distance … but not for long), and the stages are coming alive with the sounds of music, poetry, and drama. Last Saturday there was UWI DCFA Jazz.

There are at least half a dozen new Caribbean books to acquire and read. And that is only by the folks I know and follow closely as friends and colleagues.

I had in fact initially thought about focusing today exclusively on the National Theatre Arts Company’s production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, under the expert direction of Belinda Barnes. Because both the substance of the play and the space it provides for contemporary interpretation offered an opportunity to help us understand where we stand in 2022 T&T.

In the end, I suspect Belinda chose a less potentially contentious path. The plot, of course, (don’t feel bad, I could not remember much of it either) is so riddled with twists and turns there would have been multiple opportunities to exploit the numerous metaphors that awaited.

The task fell to the “narrative links” represented by two re-purposed Roman deities and one Greek goddess who become storytelling washer, obeah, and market women.

Island spirit, Ariel, was magnificently played by Syncytia Bishop and lead character, Prospero, by veteran Nickolai Salcedo on the evening I attended.

This is so much of our current crises and trials in The Tempest. There was a young talented cast to interpret this on stage, and to provide the links. This provided an irresistible opportunity that was not fully exploited, in my view, though the main principles were touched.

An overthrow and subsequent island exile. Insecure leadership. Magic (or the need for it). Vengeance. Rage. Love. And an eventual resolution.

All of this as our days of floods, continued violence, political intrigue, and cynical exploitation of grief and suffering continue.

There is something in the way the play’s surprising, non sequiturial conclusion (as presented on stage) raised questions of the kind we currently confront that are not easily dismissed.

NTACTT’s rendition, complete with original music by Nickolai Salcedo and others, supported by the National Steel Symphony Orchestra, helped take us on a journey we dare not fail to navigate.

 

 

Non-football World Cup choices

Listen to it here:

Okay, here’s an easy one. What’s the name of the team you’re backing at the FIFA World Cup? Then, try this one: Why are you backing that particular team?

The only folks who are not required to answer these questions are bandwagonists such as … let’s just call him PR. But, even in his case, I must confess he has stuck to a particular (losing) EPL team for much of the past few years, despite a lack of loyalty to individual players such as … CR (no relation).

So, PR is a bandwagonist when it comes to players, but not necessarily with his team, no matter the magnitude of licks being sustained. So, we know he isn’t going to back Portugal under any circumstances.

I am calling no names, because passions run high among Caribbean football supporters such as … let’s call her FM … and you can incur wrath even in relatively minor cases of mispronunciation. Repeat after me: It’s not “Kwatar.”

But, back to serious business. Name your team. Then carefully and concisely explain why you like that team.

Question A is pretty simple. The vast majority of Caribbean people I know – even if they can’t call the names of three players on the team at any point in time – place their confidence in Brazil. Okay, okay, the know-it-alls can explain why they prefer Argentina or France entirely on footballing grounds.

In some instances - largely for non-footballing reasons too embarrassing to raise here - some would cheer for Germany or even England. There are even the types who are mourning the absence of Italy.

To be fair, some people know their football and can rattle off the names of 5 and 6 and 7 top players from these teams. Ditto those whose second choice is either Senegal or Ghana.

So, we like Brazil. The Jamaicans think their national team plays the same style of football. LOL. Take a minute to catch your breath, then try to remember when T&T supporters made a similar claim.

And many of us would have loved to have seen Senegal or Ghana in the final showdown. There are also people like SM who take things one game at a time. The other day he messaged me to ask if I was impressed with Croatia! By this time today, he might have already called with expressions of solidarity for the players of Australia.

I have also come across some football stragglers who are amazed at the fact that the faces of the players representing a growing number of teams look nothing like the portraits of the people we see on the news who run those countries.

In fact, PR has been keeping track of the number of seemingly misplaced players who are scoring goals! Look! Look! EVEN this team and that team! Noticed something?

So, in answering the “why” question, we really aren’t talking too much football are we? I cannot lie. I back Brazil (even as Neymar has dedicated his first goal, in advance, to that thug Bolsonaro), but have a keen eye on France (because of football, I assure you … though there’s also Tchouaméni, Dembélé, Koundé and Konaté) and I have crossed my fingers on behalf of Senegal and Ghana (for reasons of the heart).

I am rather unapologetic about such fickleness, particularly with those who contend that politics – both of the capital “P’ and in lowercase – should not invade the field of sport. LOL!

If there is one country on the planet that should not be confused about this is T&T. Here, sport is capable of generating political cleavages in ways nothing else can.

Erroneously seen as exclusively and inelastically linked to behaviour and social performance, there has been more political investment in sport than virtually any other ameliorative intervention to address youth dysfunctionality – all falling way short of addressing the systemic inequities that have brought us here.

Consequently, malpractice, incompetence and conmanship are often overlooked as mere, even admirable, incidentals in pursuit of a greater good. Understand this dynamic and you can come to terms with the queasiness of those who love football but have serious problems with FIFA and the actions that have now taken us to Qatar.

So, today’s line-up of games offers a few favourites and dilemmas. Who’s backing Mexico against Saudi Arabia? France vs Tunisia? Poland against Argentina? Australia vs Denmark?

Every last one of us will be taking our pick. Not our first or second or third choices. But we will be there, cheering someone on. Take two minutes to ask yourself why.