Caricom’s crisis governance

With all due respect to everyone concerned, including the UN and Caricom SGs, I paid close attention to just three speakers at Sunday's torturously long opening ceremony of Caricom Heads of Government Meeting in Suriname – John Briceño of Belize, Chan Santokhi of Suriname, and Dickon Mitchell of Grenada.

Briceño, as outgoing chairman during an unprecedented period of turmoil. Santokhi as incoming chairman - and, like Briceño, from an “outlier” continental member state not umbilically tied to UWI or hooked on cricket. While Mitchell, a UWI graduate, was the new kid on the block.

Fresh from his baptism as chairman of the regional grouping, Briceño was worth a listen as he manoeuvred his hand out of the mouth of a hungry Caricom lion in handing over to Santokhi.

It is however advisable that public servants permit more extemporaneous expression by the politicians at such events – just as they are during cantankerous leaders’ caucuses tightly guarded from public view.

Because of all this, the Belizean leader was big on platitudes and effusive with the painfully well-known and obvious, while granting himself a single profound line around which the entire agenda could have been designed.

“Crisis governance,” he said, “is the new normal.” This, indeed, had to be the unspoken, overarching theme for a meeting of leaders for whom, as it has always been, everything remains a priority.

That’s why the failure of a longstanding commitment to rationalise over-packed agendas. But in the end, it always comes down to management of a series of simultaneous developmental crises.

Even when there appeared to have been some space, along came a pandemic, sharp economic decline in most states, and now, fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

So, yes, the rest of Briceño’s address outlines the well-known challenges. But the “crisis governance” punchline actually comes near the start. He could have ended there.

Of course, and to be clear, at both national and regional levels, when have states of crisis not framed our experience? When has EVERYTHING not been a priority? It is a dynamic that predates even the advent of independence 60 years ago.

When it came to Mitchell, it would have been preferable to have let him loose on his own – fresh from the hustings with all the passion and fury that accompany newness.

Instead, there was full restatement of the endless priorities – regional transportation, food, the climate crisis, the pandemic and his country’s assigned portfolio of science and technology. The copy of the speech I received awaited the words of a senior public servant on the latter, hugely important, subject.

There ought to have been a case, made up front by him, that his regional assignment lies at the core of the responses to concurrent crises. He must know it is an area that exceeds the confines of the “science and technology” craved by technocratic originators of the portfolio. This enters terrain he, as an under-60, should understand as mindset.

We needed to hear him say he will be among those to lead a revolution. Maybe he will come to that. But on Sunday, such a message was not woven into a bureaucratic regurgitation of current realities.

Then came Santokhi – in many ways a well-timed ascendant to Caricom chairmanship – an emerging oil boom, mainland location, diverse population, acquaintance with recurring tumult, and a safe distance away from most traditional Caricom fancies.

Note the discomfort of the Surinamese reader of the citation on behalf of Viv Richards OCC. It could have been the same in Belize, Haiti, and even The Bahamas where a preoccupation with “the good old days” of West Indies cricket is barely understood.

Santokhi had a thinly disguised message for this cricket-playing neighbour: “Offshore oil and gas is new for Suriname and Guyana,” he said.

“I welcome my Caribbean sisters and brothers, to benefit from our resources and invite them to invest and contribute as contractors and sub-contractors,

“All you have to do is register your business at our Chamber of Commerce and partner with a Surinamese company to become a local content (sic).”

His trusted foreign minister is former ASG at both Caricom and the OAS, Albert Ramdin, who has also been pinch-hitting on his behalf on several domestic issues and knows the Caribbean well. His hand is easily recognisable.

Santokhi’s turn at the helm promises to be as torrid as Briceño’s initiation. He will need all the support that’s available. His “local content” remark is quite an opener and supports his recognition of a joint Caricom enterprise to address emerging challenges.

His speech was worth the wait.

Postscript: Congratulations to all OCC awardees. But special mention here of David Rudder – a T&T and Caribbean treasure whose rallying call transcends the boundaries of mere cricket.

The perils of pessimism

Part 1

Today’s headline has been borrowed from a Foreign Affairs magazine article published last week. In it, Daniel W. Drezner examined shifting poles of global power and influence and explored grounds for hope - presumably by all concerned – in the face of general gloom.

And though I propose to explore far more parochial concerns, I thought Drezner’s headline and essential arguments contained sufficient guidance for a nuanced examination of the prospects for our Caribbean region.

The first has to do with our awkward engagement of prevailing global realities. More accomplished voices on this issue are not often heard, resident as they are on the outer margins of our news agendas. So, some of the rest of us are compelled to weigh in.

The fact is, we have nowhere to go as solitary small states subject to the turbulent vagaries of natural, historical, and geo-political challenges to sustainability and survivability.

Jamaica just learned this lesson at the Commonwealth. All of us also looked on at the diplomatic flaccidity that followed prior vigour ahead of the LA Summit of the Americas.

Count on the indomitable Antigua and Barbuda diplomat Ron Sanders, though, to find shine on the other side of the cricket ball.

Even more than being “worth attending” (as his recent column on the SOA concluded) Sanders argues that the personal attention of President Biden to “candid, hard truths” jointly expressed by Caribbean leaders, provided grounds for positivity and optimism. Herein, a lesson in collective endeavour.

This segues roughly into a seemingly unrelated point I really need to make, but which fits the requirements of today’s headline.

Part 2

Much of our pessimism – and there is no denying that there is – resides in the fact of ill-equipped leadership in almost all sectors - the private sector, civil society, and glaringly in politics.

Fact: There is no substantial qualitative difference between the private and public sectors, in most of our countries, when it comes to the requirements of digital transformation and the guidance to take us there.

People are still lining up in sun and rain, having multiple visits to the same offices, being refused service in the absence of paper, and deprived of access to routine services because digital natives, and the mindsets they bring, are being denied their rightful leadership positions.

Resistance to pessimism succeeds whenever we consider the presence of a generation of innovators and thinkers who currently thrive in their own small spaces right here in the Caribbean. If you believe there is a “lost generation” of young people, you are being wilfully blind.

Part 3

The politics have evoked conflicting emotions on this question. More appropriately identified as elections and special events machineries, most of the region’s political parties are otherwise functionally moribund.

There is little, if any, systematic political education, no succession planning, and a philosophical pragmatism rooted in an absence of belief in and commitment to anything.

That some elders now consider themselves worthy of reactivation to assist equally signals their own past failures as it does a sense of contemporary hopelessness.

Even so, this is no cause to yield to dark pessimism. I looked at the recent election in Grenada (the runup to which was unpardonably ignored by too many of us in the media) and the emergence of 44-year-old Dickon Mitchell. He reminded me, during the brisk campaign, of our own Farley Augustine (36) – young, precocious, and bright.

I thought of the emergence of the other under-60s – Mia Mottley (57), Andrew Holness (49), Irfaan Ali (42), Roosevelt Skerritt (50), and Timothy Harris (58).

Whatever their current popularity/predicaments – Harris is barely clinging to office, Holness is embattled, and Skerritt is already into a fourth consecutive term – there are benefits to be derived from the fact that they were all born after the first wave of independence movements in the Caribbean.

By sharp contrast, the septuagenarians of T&T, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and up to last week, Grenada, need to understand that there must come a time when they decide to step aside.

Of course, it’s not just a matter of age. But vintage is a double-edged sword. The political scientists should spend a lot less time sneakily picking sides and explain this to us.

There is a pessimism that’s setting in that has, as a main component, the growing irrelevance of our political leadership.

In each of the three scenarios, there is the peril of pessimism. Hope only emerges when we honestly confront them.

On safely seeking safety

More likely than not you missed the fact that Monday was World Refugee Day. Yes, “dem again.” Few appeared to believe that the occasion required much official or even informal attention in T&T.

Even less attention has been paid to the fact that on the margins of the recent Summit of the Americas, a ‘Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection’ was signed by 21 countries, not including T&T.

The main intention of the Declaration was to express a willingness to “strengthen national, regional, and hemispheric efforts to create the conditions for safe, orderly, humane, and regular migration and to strengthen frameworks for international protection and cooperation.”

The Caribbean signatories were Barbados, Belize, Guyana, Haiti, and Jamaica. I have been advised that “a decision was taken (by T&T) not to endorse” the Declaration having been given the opportunity to do so. I have not seen an attempt by anyone to get to the bottom of this specific abstention.

Even so, according to the UNHCR, our government has “supported recommendations made at the recent Universal Periodic Review to implement measures to ensure that all children, including refugees, asylum seekers and migrants, have equal access to education, and to set up a national refugee status determination procedure whilst developing national legislation on refugees aligned with existing international standards.”

We have? There has still been no groundswell of either spontaneous or engineered public opinion on such issues.

Letters to the editor, social media posts, and plaintive pressers ritualistically omit mention of possible measures to address the tragedies we encounter. This is clearly not the stuff of political advantage or disadvantage.

Our resident Chavistas, closet xenophobes and even those claiming human rights high ground have not sought to interrogate these striking omissions. The “close de borders” gang has moved on to COVID denial and anti-vaxing.

On Monday, the UNHCR nevertheless restated the essential global objectives:

“Whoever they are, people forced to flee should be treated with dignity. Anyone can seek protection, regardless of who they are or what they believe. It is non-negotiable: seeking safety is a human right.

“Wherever they come from, people forced to flee should be welcomed. Refugees come from all over the globe. To get out of harm’s way, they might take a plane, a boat, or travel on foot. What remains universal is the right to seek safety.

“Whenever people are forced to flee, they have a right to be protected. Whatever the threat – war, violence, persecution – everyone deserves protection. Everyone has a right to be safe.”

Of course, all of these are aspirations better verbalised than done. Our own ad hoc, calamitous embrace of the imperatives has reflected the anomalies, though we are not the only ones.

There are simply more people who have been forced out of their homelands in recent human history – over 100 million by some counts. Ukrainians have latterly joined a list that had for more than a decade included Syria, Afghanistan and, of course, Venezuela among others.

It is true that the realities of small size, limited resources and vexatious, counter-productive socio-political arrangements militate against even the most modest ambitions.

These are chronic Caribbean conditions that have rendered many of us incapable of satisfactorily meeting our obligations under international law and basic principles of humanitarian conduct.

It might be that the share of the global burden has been disproportionate, but there has also been a shortage of serious effort on our part.

Yes, the rest of the world has also exhibited shortcomings. There are notable inequities among both source and host countries. Some, for example, are noting smoother flows involving those fleeing the crisis in Ukraine, even as the wealthy have opted for the outsourcing of moral and lawful responsibility to others … of different backgrounds.

Back home, there is a timeline of atrocities we can reference. The killing of nine-month-old Yaelvis Santoyo Sarabia in February, the fiendish “close de borders” demonstration outside the Queen’s Park Oval in 2019, and the 2020 return of a boatload of migrants including 16 minors in the midst of a yellow level weather alert.

Meanwhile, on Monday, I had cause to recall “Richard De Souza” (not his real name) and Everard Sookharry who famously epitomised the scramble out of T&T in 1990 amid (fake) claims of ethnic strife.  

The perilous wheel well of a Lockheed Tristar bound for Toronto became, back then, a macabre symbol of our version of flight. By then, others had simply bought a ticket, landed, and claimed a right to stay, based largely on lies.

We appeared to pay much closer attention to these things back then.

 

 

The habits of exclusion

A combination of seemingly unrelated developments helped frame today’s conversation.

Often, when we aren’t keeping our eyes on development prospects for our tiny Caribbean countries, we miss important connections that help plot the coordinates of our condition.

Wait for a meeting of hemispheric leaders, a new media development agency to address the needs of the Americas, and a steelpan competition featuring outstanding international talent to provide lessons.

Let’s use Summit of the Americas 2022 as a key trigger. In Los Angeles, the US hosts proposed a highly aspirational theme: “Building a Sustainable, Resilient, and Equitable Future.”

These areas of focus can help contextualise multi-dimensional relationships – the “equitable” bit as urgent and as relevant as issues of sustainability and resilience.

There are both internal and external dynamics attached to equity as an indispensable component of development.

It has been clear, for instance, that in the face of the global climate crisis, a notion of "justice” emerges as geo-political challenge, even as it presents issues of equity between sectors, communities, and intra-regionally.

Throughout the course of the Summit, I paid close attention to the equity dimension of the main theme and to when “inclusivity” earned mention as a key ingredient of the prescriptions.

The Caricom countries had taken “exclusivity” to the table from early. The main contention being that a meeting of countries of the Americas ought to have been open to everyone. It was later flagged by several leaders including PM Rowley.

It is no mistake that we had taken the early lead on this subject. Yet, most of us withdrew earlier passions, leaving St Vincent and the Grenadines a lone Caribbean absentee on the grounds of exclusivity. St Kitts and Nevis and Grenada stayed away for other reasons.

In some circles, the SOA therefore earned the moniker of being an “exclusionary summit.” A function not only of who were not invited, but those who stayed away. Add Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Bolivia, and El Salvador.

In the Caribbean, we know what all this means. For instance, the very week the Summit was launched, a new media development institution emerged.

Described as being “nested within the Organization of American States (OAS)”, the Center for Media Integrity of the Americas was launched to incentivise “the practice of independent, non-interest affiliated journalism and social media production.”

Its Board of Advisors comprises twenty-eight outstanding media development and human rights practitioners from the US and Latin America. I know and have worked with some of them. They are people of principle and integrity. Yet, the Caribbean is nowhere to be found.

It clearly never occurred to either the OAS, the folks at Fundación Gabo (Gabriel Garcia Marquez Foundation), or the Washington Post that Caribbean media exist and are important pillars of our democracy and development.

Over the years I have found it highly problematic to ensure discrete mention of “the Caribbean” as a unique space, within the context of those countries south of Florida on this side of the Atlantic.

Many have heard me say that we have neighbouring cousins, comrades, and friends – but we are not all the same person. For, whenever we yield to other formulations, our experience is that we tend to be excluded, especially when benefits are being allocated.

Some, even within inter-governmental hemispheric bodies, would - if they could - testify to this habit of exclusion. It does not undermine any cause to speak openly about this, for it’s not baseless paranoia or some persecution complex.

Then came Panograma. Pan, in my view, remains the greatest thing we do in T&T. The world’s best makers, tuners, arrangers, and players can be found right here. But it is now an international instrument whose cause is not assisted by parochialism and xenophobia.

So, Frenchman Mathieu Borgne won this year’s virtual competition. And true, after every pan competition, people cry “t’ief, t’ief.” But it was embarrassing to see some online comments about the Borgne victory and how, according to one writer, “allyuh go put France on top of a Trini competition?”

After he performed, I had Borgne at the top of my amateur tabulation. He played a beautiful, free-flowing interpretation of Charlie Parker’s ‘Donna Lee’ (how dare he!).

This week also marks three years since the sadistic “close the borders” demonstration outside the Queen’s Park Oval even as desperate Venezuelan men, women, and children lined up nervously at night for the start of the migrant regularisation programme.

There has thus been much to remind us of the habits of exclusion and how, even as perpetual victims, we have often displayed a mastery of them at the expense of the assets of inclusion.

 

Keep it down over there, guys

It was Miami, Florida December 1994 and a particularly garrulous Caribbean media corps had assembled for a press conference called by then President of Guyana, Dr Cheddi Jagan.

We had been out and about the day before, so there were several journalistic “war stories” to encapsulate the food, shopping and other escapades that had ensued.

Occasion was the First Summit of the Americas. Dr Jagan was pressing for his New Global Human Order – an egalitarian “manifesto” he had developed over many years in the political wilderness, but which had come to occupy more significant space as a Caribbean prescription when he took office in 1992.

When he arrived in the press area, the president greeted familiar faces and extended his hand to a small cadre of other journalists.

I remember the moment very well. Jagan was passionate about his agenda for debt relief, poverty eradication, and a more enabling global environment for growth in the developing world.

Based in Guyana at the time, I had the chance to speak with him about all of this. I believe he was firmly committed to these things and that he thought the Summit provided a tailormade platform for consideration of his views. The Declaration in fact included some faint features of them.

By the time the Second Summit arrived in Chile in 1998 (I was also there), President Jagan had died the year before and his wife, Janet, had taken over and was largely ignored by the mainly US and Latin press in Santiago.

The presence of other Caricom leaders, including Basdeo Panday, was equally unremarkable and Linda Jafar and I even had problems securing interviews from them for our reports.

So, back to Miami 1994, Dr Jagan was seamlessly delivering his NGHO manifesto when, in stepped a technician guy from a big US network. “Keep it down over there, guys,” he said, without recognition of the fact that he had interrupted a sitting head of state. “We are conducting an interview next door.”

The Caribbean journalists all turned to the technician guy and asked him to leave and to recognise that he had interrupted the press conference of a Caribbean leader. “I don’t care who he is,” was the response. This could have come to blows, I thought at the time.

No such passions at the Ninth Summit in Los Angeles this week though. It has been a short but vigorous path to this edition. I was, for a period prior to its staging, associated with the near shambolic Fifth Summit of the Americas, right here in Port of Spain. So, I have some insights into the intensity of the process and the influence of the geo-politics.

There is no way I will mock the resolve of our leaders to encourage all-inclusive hosting of a meeting of leaders of the hemisphere whatever the state of play on their respective turfs.

For certain, territorial claims involving Guatemala and Belize, and Guyana and Venezuela could feature, if people wished, in determination of who enters the roll of invitees to any Caricom event, but this has never been the case.

There is however the fact that this time around in Los Angeles, none of the uninvited would have attended anyway. Cuba and Nicaragua had already made it clear and, even if he wanted to, the president of Venezuela would have had to negotiate immunity from criminal prosecution in the US.

On Monday, as some of us tallied the Caricom excursion to LA, we were noting the shame-faced, low-key departures. PM Rowley posted on Facebook and went his way and PM Mottley appeared to have eluded the Barbadian media as she exited for the States.

We already knew St Vincent and the Grenadines would have been a no-show. Dominica seemed poised to boycott as well, but Mr Skerritt is in LA. PM Keith Mitchell also has June 23 elections to attend to and has prioritised things accordingly.

Caricom chairman, PM John Briceño of Belize had said last month the region was considering not attending the Summit in the absence of invitations to Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Gaston Browne of Antigua and Barbuda had earlier led the charge.

Since then, there have been meetings with US Special Advisor on the Summit, Chris Dodd and VP, Kamala Harris, during which a rethink of the Caricom position was reportedly urged.

Last Monday, Briceño was en route to LA. Browne was due to board a flight yesterday. As the days have progressed, I cannot help but remember the words: “Keep it down over there, guys!”

We have apparently complied.

Climate and our concourse of crises

Hopefully, the main subject occupying this space today will resonate, however, tangentially, amongst those genuinely concerned about our future.

The temptation to take our eyes off some aspirations – even the need to prevail over the long term – is all too irresistible when confronted with immediate emergencies and emotions.

The current wave of senseless, murderous violence, political depravities, and a perception of general societal decay is, understandably, an overwhelming feature of national consciousness.

It took the venerable Noble Philip last weekend to caution against a summary verdict on prospects for the future, based on the mistaken notion of a “lost generation” and some kind of imminent social collapse.

The concept of “collapse” also finds suitable space in another discourse that disappears as quickly and as efficiently as it emerges as a matter of national, official and communal urgency.

It might be that all concerned, even we first scribblers of history, need to continually integrate the urgency of the climate crisis, against the backdrop of extreme vulnerability. This was not only about COP26 last year.

This assessment on the state of affairs has more than once been described as hyperbole and needless scare-mongering – especially by those who have not spent time examining the science offered by a majority of its leading, authoritative exponents.

We have learnt so much during this time of a pandemic to confirm the presence of denialist loonies who mistake ignorance for scepticism and whose packet of bad tidings has latterly included anti-vaccination messaging to adjoin climate change scepticism and other flat-earth beliefs.

The backdrop to today’s modest message occupies all this time and space mainly because it brings important context and understanding to the gigantic challenge before us. Climate change is real, immediate, and a crisis to be urgently addressed.

It is not being heard about on the hustings. Not substantially debated in our parliaments. There are broad portfolios that address environmental management issues that emerge as a consequence. But so little that elevates the subject to the level of other urgent needs – many of which are related.

Recently, I have been engaged in a journalistic exercise among colleagues to promote greater awareness of social justice elements involving countries, regions, sectors, communities, and peoples, not only of the effects of the climate crisis, but of measures being taken to address it.

As with the pandemic, there is an unevenness of impacts and consequences, critical questions related to distribution of power and influence, and therefore, the arousal of politics.

Over the past few weeks, a few Caribbean journalists have been attempting to address “climate justice” as an experience occasioned by our countries’ engagement of the climate crisis, both as subjects and as objects.

The ongoing exercise has, not unexpectedly, brought a virtual concourse or assemblage of crises to the counter. Inescapable cross currents of nations engaging social, cultural and political calamities that have emerged as acute indicators of the prospects for survival against the backdrop of what the science has declared is upon us.

It is therefore absolutely impossible, to cite one small example, to initiate or to report on the waiving of taxes on hybrid vehicles in T&T – a measure in keeping with our country’s nationally determined contributions (NDCs) under the 2015 Paris Agreement – in the absence of numerous contexts that have little to do with vehicle specifications.

This space has more than once been used to suggest critical connections between pandemic management and some vital elements of the climate crisis. They are not as remote as they at first appear.

If we are to consider the social justice components of our numerous challenges, we also cannot omit concerns that extend to a variety of social, cultural and political dynamics.

Almost a year ago to the day, I concluded on social media that the upheavals of the day had been the outcome of “a concourse of angers.”

I can’t remember the precise reference from Frederick Douglass (and if it was a term he actually used or that I had simply been clever) but the post addressed an inability to recognise the immediacy of purported long-term aspirations through the haze of angers, crises, and emergencies of today.

Climate change is there alright – as virtual ground space in the concourse of crises we occupy.

 

Your turn, T&T unions

Through the glare of recent equally headline-worthy developments are the ongoing contentions by the country’s labour unions regarding proposed changes in NIS pension benefits from age 60 to 65.

The measure is being flagged by the NIB as an issue related to the very sustainability of the 50-year-old system.

The 10th Actuarial Review of the scheme was conducted by the International Labour Organization (ILO) which delivered an undeniably grim outlook that was long anticipated by experts in the field.

Competent analysis of this has already been forthcoming and the views and information are available for further insights. This is not the focus of today’s contribution from me.

But, believe me, from my own experience, all of this is unlikely to capture the urgent imaginations of young members of our labour force, even more so that the pandemic era has served to accelerate growth in the informal sector and in individual contract work.

The thing is, there is no haste by a majority of our workforce to pay attention to this.

For this reason, the efforts by labour unions to assure the multilateral nature of the conversation are extremely important.

Had it not been for the fact of collective bargaining, and a notion of formal worker representation, our workforce would have remained largely passive, outside of the efforts of trade unionists, and some employers, at this time.

The force of other arguments, on behalf of the workforce, is lost in the partisan battlefield in the form of apportioned blame, including from those who once ran the show.

The fact is, sounding an urgent alarm has never been found to be politically convenient – even when experts assigned to the NIB had waved huge, red banners.

It is the unions that are now called upon to lay rational challenges to the assertions of the ILO Review and to propose sensible alternatives.

Now, it is eminently understandable if you are not confident about this – given the movement’s recent pandemic credentials. But I believe they are indeed capable of outsourcing the expertise to contribute meaningfully.

They would need to realise that the work needed to dissect the issue requires an outlook that relies heavily on skills outside of the existing repertoire.

As a supporter of the movement and past member of one, the performance of many unions in the face of the pandemic was appalling and embarrassing, especially those that actively promoted COVID-denial and anti-vax agendas.

Meanwhile, the ILO’s May 5 Social Dialogue Report has stressed the importance of tripartite arrangements that reinforce enlightened dialogue and, even more, that the process of collective bargaining is an invaluable contributor to equitable outcomes.

The fact is, globally, the changing world of work – especially in the face of lockdowns and work-from-home arrangements almost everywhere – requires a much higher level of socially coherent aspirations and a willingness to change.

I have employed this space more than once in recent months to highlight the dramatic shortcomings of both our public and private sectors on this question. Modern digital facades exist to reinforce archaic processes and structures.

Both private entrepreneurs and public sector bosses appear resistant to and incapable of leading the required transitions. Much of the onus now needs to turn to the influence of workers’ representatives who understand the inevitable march of modernity.

The unions need to clinically assess the demands of telework, where they are relevant, and onsite work where digitally transformed processes are required as effective instruments to achieve greater efficiency and productivity.

How much time, however, has been spent by our unions on determining the degree to which there have been asymmetries in the ability of workers to interface remotely with their places of employment, customers, and suppliers?

It’s two years in. Have the unions been studying this? Have they surveyed rises and falls in productivity? Are union leaders believers in the inevitability of digital transformation?

One of the points made by the ILO Social Dialogue Report is that pandemic conditions have served to exacerbate unevenness across countries, communities and sectors.

Collective bargaining, the ILO insists, “has played a role in mitigating the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on employment and earnings, helping to cushion some of the effects on inequality while reinforcing the resilience of enterprises and labour markets.”

Put another way, more productive union activity not less, is required to take us to better days. Please, dear comrades, help us to have the required confidence in you to achieve such objectives. As it stands, too many of us have good reason to be sceptical.