Wages and Reality

Almost as if on remote cue, the recently released International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Global Wage Report 2024-2025 strikes some amazingly familiar chords when cross-referenced against the ongoing Salaries Review Commission (SRC) issue and accompanying discussions surrounding what is essentially a question of wage inequality among T&T workers.

I had originally thought about directly engaging the SRC matter, including the Prime Minister’s astounding manner, but noted the contribution of fellow GML columnist, Helen Drayton on Sunday. In my view, she has inserted the clearest, most principled considerations into the discourse – sullied as the ongoing debate is by political partisanship, outright malice, and gross ignorance.

There is no simple summary of the former Independent Senator’s missive, so if you have a serious interest in the subject, please get your hands/eyes on a copy and read every word.

In (totally inadequate) brief, Ms Drayton gets into the methodology employed by the SRC – the Hay Job Evaluation System - proposes a “judicious” review of its recommendations, urges consideration of specific features of the public service, and suggests a parallel starting point of 4% for everybody (my summary).

She also explores in lesser but important detail, the vexing question of government involvement in wage negotiations in institutions of the state.

In my view the ILO Wage Report addresses such issues from the broader perspective of whether, in any economy, equity prevails as a norm in assessing remuneration within and across sectors. This includes the informal economy which constitutes an important, growing element of our macro-economic landscape.

There is, according to the Report, a decline in global wage inequality – the relationship between low and high wage earners. The statistics provided are not sufficiently disaggregated to represent our own reality, but there is a sense that this might not entirely be the case here. The Ministry of Labour should tell us what is known about T&T trends, as the unions appear hopeless on matters of research.

It is correspondingly insufficient to point to the egalitarian nature of high turnouts at entertainment centres, street food stalls, and “Black Friday” sales to conclude that things aren’t as bad as being portrayed by some.

Protesters occupying public spaces appear well-fed and dressed, and parking spaces at such events are hard to find. So, should we ask where are the “suffering masses?”

One respected senior journalist turned to me at a recent business function and asked: “Does this look like we are in serious financial trouble in this country?”

The quick resort to anecdote over careful perusal of data and research appears to be the preferred option. Yet consumers jumping on each other’s backs at five in the morning at a sale does not signify that all is okay. Neither does an absence of chronic, vociferous public protest nor the long lines at the doubles, gyro, and empanada stalls.

These things do, however, tell us something about the elasticity/inelasticity of public opinion and behaviour.

Both the beleaguered labour unions, which represent an increasingly small minority – less than 25% of the working population - and employers in the formal sector (those in the know can insert their own statistic here) however appear to be missing some important points.

Additionally, wage inequality in the informal sector typically represents a worst-case scenario with women experiencing the messiest end of the stick alongside employees in selected sectors together with migrant and under-age workers.

Under such scenarios, even otherwise indispensable “social dialogue” does not often capture the realities. Neither the labour unions nor employers typically include adequate consideration of these cohorts. It is worse now that tripartism appears to have disappeared as a feature of the labour environment and is being replaced by “gambage” and political extortion.

Dysfunctional collective bargaining arrangements are also degrading the prospects for an organised, rational approach to wage setting and other incentives. Additionally, for too long now, and in important spaces, negotiations lag sluggishly behind work contract timelines.

In the same way there is a justifiable focus on the nature of the evaluation leading to the SRC recommendations (based on the perception that these senior state employees are otherwise well-off) there is an absence of the assessment of needs in the organised labour sector.

What, indeed, is a “starvation wage?” Placards do not have the space to explain, and the main spokespersons appear unwilling or incapable of accepting the brief. Between the ILO Report and Helen Drayton’s submission, there are important clues. The chatter occupying the political and labour spaces is not particularly helpful.

A question of Climate Justice

It was not among the planet’s finest hours, but the outcome of COP29, held in Baku, Azerbaijan last week at minimum confirmed the indispensability of multilateralism as a singularly important mechanism for achievement of collective survival objectives.

It could have all ended in absolute shambles but did not. That will certainly be on offer when the “1.5 to stay alive” slogan born in the Caribbean is conclusively proven unviable through lived experience. Already, extreme weather events in Europe and North America have dispelled prior notions of invulnerability on the part of the big and strong.

In Baku, meanwhile, there were walkouts, vocal dissent and disgruntlement, hypocritical posturing, and continued resistance to the modalities that signal moral and fiscal responsibility for the current state of affairs.

In the same way it should not be taken for granted that there is cognitive uniformity among the ranks of the developed countries (whose undisputed role in getting us to where we are is well established), there can also be the mistake of assuming monolithic conditions among the rest of us small island states.

As developing countries, we are not all starting from the same point when it comes to the “energy transition” – or the gradual movement away from reliance on fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy.

Consequently, there is studied muteness on some features of the decarbonising project by some of us, urgent desperation from most others, and the reticence of geopolitical favour on the part of some … with January 2025 in full view.

Follow closely what is happening right here in the Caribbean in T&T, Guyana, and Suriname. Consider phenomenal GDP growth in Guyana – sufficient to launch an unprecedented developmental leap – and the prospects for Suriname in its state of chronic economic instability.

Then look at the Dragon field’s OFAC compliance. Come, thereby, face to face with a tangled web that combines everything that is difficult about the COP agenda for some.

Note that Guyana’s belated temperance about the next moves belies prior vocal activism, and Suriname’s own quiet contemplation of the development game even in the face of absolutist language that shares its fears as a low-lying coastal territory.  

We have mostly been careful in what we say and nuanced the language of crisis to reflect the imperatives of development in measures of “justice.” What, indeed, can be “just” about a delayed rescue from poverty and deprivation and reluctant largesse derived from the proceeds of what is now being prohibited?

I remember the school bully who passed us in the classroom aisle and delivered heavy blows to the back of our heads. “Whap! Sorry.” “Whap! Sorry.” And then up front with the mocking offer of icepacks for our buzzing heads.

This all makes for a menu of possibilities and impossibilities in pursuit of solutions to the fast-rolling tide of the climate crisis. One point five can and will be surpassed and there is every indication that even as we witness the early signs, death and destruction are foreseeable, extreme scenarios.

Like an icepack to the back of the head, a non-binding commitment of US$300 billion a year, in the face of spurned responsibility, is not entirely inconceivable when power confronts victimhood.

With a US$1.3 trillion tab through to 2035 we stayed in the room as the figures dwindled and the fighting continued. There is every indication we will do this again.

It is just that Belem November 2025 follows January 2025 in Washington DC. And, if COP29 fell short on the dough (remember that US$100 billion by 2020?), COP30 seems destined to shortchange the world in the transition column.

On the margins, once again, will remain unsettled questions surrounding the future conduct of carbon markets, equitable distribution of the pains of transition through countries, communities, and demographics, and the general treatment of loss and damage claims.

Not far behind, and in the background, will remain the spectre of gross injustice for which there can be no standard definitions. So, yes, multilateralism has survived the perilous path so far, but as we see on other fronts it is possible to sit around the table and talk while yielding a whip of outrageous neglect and impunity.

The Value of Pan

Offered the rare (and flattering) pleasure of addressing one session of a cross faculty co-curricular programme hosted by birdsong at UWI last week on what I consider to be “the value of pan”, it challenged me to summarise and sharpen some of my longstanding views on the steelpan phenomenon in T&T.

What inspired the invitation, I was told, was a comment I had made in a recent column that successive national budgets were failing to mention the value of the instrument in all its manifest dimensions, even as its autonomy as a national asset requires greater recognition.

I have contended that pan’s designation as the National Musical Instrument should not serve as a cue for continued or even deeper reliance on state largesse – as is currently being asserted – since its value should never be compromised by official whim.

Though there is sometimes both useful and harshly critical feedback on some of the things I have asserted over the years (as an observer and not an established, regularly cited “expert” on the subject) I have never considered my views representative of anything but the result of an enduring concern about the long-term future of my country and the potential role of the steelpan.

So, it was relatively easy for me last week to discuss “the value of pan” against the backdrop of broader national developmental goals and the “values” required to achieve them.

The presentation provided an opportunity to play with the terms “value” and “value systems” – that interplay between a notion of “wealth” and the corresponding achievement of goals employing such assets, together with a clear pecking order based on what is deemed important and indispensable.

So, I started with “historical value” and the degree to which pan is rooted in the collective defiance of an oppressed group. The way colonial authorities were defied at the very start of this journey when it came to drums. How official disapproval rallied people and stimulated emotions the way only music can achieve.

Faced with a ban in the late 1800s, people appeared to be saying: “Nope. No way.” Then through tamboo-bamboo to the percussive powers of discarded metals to what we have now, there birthed and grew the steelpan. Out of defiant protest.

There are several texts that more competently trace this development, and I consider Kim Johnson’s storytelling on such matters among the best.

Then, last week, I focused on “musical value” (keyword “resilience”) and the ways in which this instrument has been able to deliver on its core indigenous musical assignments, while capturing and embracing a wide variety of genres through innovations and expertise that have expanded the instrument’s (and its players’) musical significance and scope.

There was no way I was going to attempt to get more into that in the presence of musicologist, Derrianne Dyett, beyond citing the observations of other notable experts.

Then comes “socio-cultural” value (key word “unity”) – the degree to which the steelband has been able to grow into a working model for social organisation and development and the collective harnessing of human potential.

There must be academics looking closely at this point, since there are lessons to be learned from the panyard experience that are not readily evident elsewhere – including the traditional school classroom and other centres of learning.

Rigid social hierarchies are also overturned and reassembled at the panyard and, as in the early years, there is defiance of the dictates of social norms. It is thus, arguably, the most revolutionary of public spaces.

Then comes “economic value” – the monetising of pan’s assets. The key term here is “indigenous innovation” with an abundance of untapped intellectual property value, adding to direct earnings through a multiplicity of existing avenues.

Yes, a geographical indication as recently awarded is useful, but barely scratches the surface of immense potential in this area of hugely untapped wealth – innovations that often pass unnoticed.

I then closed the UWI session by noting the overall “developmental value” of the steelpan which spans the full range of steelpan resources – both realised and unrealised. This would be the sum of the constituent parts of historical, musical, socio-cultural, and economic values with the main characteristics being defiance, resilience, unity, and indigenous innovation.

Again, I recall a mid-1980s conversation with the late great Keith Smith when I stopped and turned to him as we walked along Independence Square: “You know that oil and gas will someday be gone. What else but pan would we have left?”

I cannot recall Keith’s response. But you tell me. What else will we have left?

 

Silence over noise

This year, I assigned myself the painful task of monitoring public opinion on cynical breaches of the law, common decency, and the duty of community care when it comes to noise pollution in our country.

Yes, I have been constantly reminded of the assured futility of such campaigns. “Drop it, Wesley. Ain’t gonna happen” is the now routine response to my view that there are ways to assess the state of our civilisation, and the phenomenon of noise impunity is one that should be firmly resolved.

Like-minded individuals and organisations have become used to the fact that vocal protests are easily drowned out by the near and distant clatter of bamboo, squibs, and all varieties of noisy pyrotechnics quite pointedly controlled by legislation, including but not restricted to those related to the storage and use of explosives.

If we were to discuss only the law-breaking features of this subject, we could point to the fact that there is no shortage of legislative guidance. There are our Noise Pollution Rules under the Environmental Management Act, the Explosives Act Chap 16:02, the Summary Offences Act Chap 11:02, and the Public Holiday and Festival Act Chap 19:05. But this goes beyond what the laws prescribe.

Every now and then, we are thrown the mamaguy of “zero-tolerance” policy. My notes and past dispatches on this can fill volumes on the subject. And though I am aware that I am not alone, there appear to be sad signs of battle-weary retreat by others.

There has been the gradual muting of dissent resulting from awareness of the fact that neither decision-makers at the highest levels nor street-level noisemakers seem willing to at least reflect on the multi-dimensional damage being sustained.

There have been times when hope appeared. Eight years ago, then Public Administration and Communications Minister, Maxie Cuffie, declared unequivocal commitment to address the issue. He went further down this dark, deserted alley on this matter than any other government minister I can recall.

I had hoped that even as his Cabinet colleagues eventually dropped the campaign, and in the sanctity of his retirement, Cuffie would not have abandoned the cause. Ditto former commissioners of police ostensibly no longer under the yoke of surrender to economic muscle, imprecise statute, political pressures, and misguided notions regarding what constitutes cultural norms.

On the latter point, I have pointed before to the fact that around the globe there have been longstanding “cultural practices” that have been found to be harmful and which reasonable people must continue to oppose.

There is sufficient evidence that our noisemaking at selected times of the year causes physical and emotional harm to people, animals, and our natural environment.

There are interest groups in T&T that have explored the matter in detail, and I will not recount the numerous examples cited, except to add that exceptions to the locating of “acceptable” levels of noise do not always consider their impact on wildlife with direct and indirect implications for our endangered biodiversity.

I once sat in on an eye-opening discussion by experts contemplating expansion of the reach of our Noise Pollution Rules. In the end, politics and “the culture” reigned.

The TTSPCA and other animal care organisations are (sensibly) focusing on coping mechanisms rather than on their past enthusiasm for ameliorative measures.

Letter writers to the press have become less strident in their condemnation. Perennial contributors such as “DF Redmond” of Laventille (I scoured the list of electors for the name but could not find it, but I am hoping that protection through anonymity is not the case) are increasingly being marginalised.

Let me quote him/her in his last submission: “Is this a civilised country? Is this a real place? How could bars, tyre shops, mini-marts, car wash establishments, idiot car DJs, etc, seem to have an untrammelled right to disturb entire neighbourhoods, and nary a word from all these patriots?

This paucity of genuine, impassioned responsibility is as much a crisis today as our worsening crime situation.”

My old friend, Neil Reynald, chimed in a few months ago by invoking the links that enjoin the different forms of criminality: “Despite legislation for noise disturbance/littering/gang activities/illegal firearm ownership, these activities continue unabated and without control.”  

Maybe it’s just my imagination or lapses in my monitoring of public opinion on this, but could it be we have begun queuing meekly and silently like lambs to the slaughter in the face of a connected string of criminal behaviour?

“Zero-tolerance” needs to extend beyond the platforms of official edict. Silence over noise is not an option.

The habits of democracy

By this time next week, the formal, global news agenda would have narrowed so tightly that even the tiniest gaps will be finding little meaningful space for other things, including matters of urgent importance to the rest of us in these tiny, united states of the Caribbean.

Mass atrocities including ethnic cleansing and genocide in several places are already ill-expressed as skirmishes on the margins of what is really important. The slaughter of children and babies in Palestine some kind of routine, justifiable proportionate response to another form of “terror.”

Mention of last week’s BRICS encounter, the Commonwealth Caribbean case for reparations, the ongoing deadly travails of Sudan, Yemen, and Afghanistan; rising criminality in hitherto unlikely places, and the climate crisis everywhere; all relegated to specialised attention in even more manipulable social media spaces.

In the context of this potential for hijacking of the public space, I had to make the point to hemispheric folks two weeks ago that it might be a mistake to consider the convening and execution of elections (as important as they are) as a solitary indicator of democratic affirmation.

For, had this position not provided guidance of sorts, we would have had to conclude that democracy too often nowadays produces results inimical to the pursuit of peace and people-centred development.

Not only now, but elections have long produced unsavoury characters and effectively destructive political agendas. Perhaps there can, in fact, be a tyranny of the masses through elections and not as an exceptional outcome.

It is however also true that sham elections in so-called one-party states do not fool anybody anymore.

Yet, obsessive preoccupation with this single important(!) element of the democratic process can also have the collateral effect of inferring the supremacy of process over outcome and effect. In the end, I would go with CLR James’s reference to the things that comprise “ancient habits” – or longstanding principles of public behaviour.

The academics probably have another take on this, but I think it is important to employ James’s language to broaden understanding of the instincts that drive us toward inclusivity, a sense of equity, acceptance of justice in its purest manifestations, and informed decision-making even through the fog of multiple crises.

These are things that do not descend on people overnight. It is the stuff of practice and habit. You can tell in the public space nowadays wherever autocratic behaviour is present including the easy resort to edict instead of painstaking reliance on responsible self-regulation.

This holds true in civic spaces as well. Those community-based and non-governmental organisations – some of them captured by partisan, national interests. The sporting associations with highly durable leaders, the cultural groups that know only one way, and general resistance to innovation and change in other quarters.

All these things signal levels of measurable democratic practice, notwithstanding relatively seamless leadership selection processes.

Next year, there will probably be seven national elections in Caricom countries. You never know when (and we have discussed this before) some prime minister or president will withdraw that note from his/her back pocket and declare the intensification of campaigning that never really ended five years ago.

Now that that “other” election is over, listen out for T&T, Belize, Guyana, Jamaica, Suriname, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and St Kitts and Nevis in 2025. Now think about the things that best characterise their respective observance of democratic principles.

You would probably realise that addressing the clear deficits goes beyond electoral systems – however much reform is required.

We can go state by state and remark about the extent to which, outside of election time, there has been a tendency to orient decision-making and the implementation of changes through wide collaboration and engagement at all levels. Then, add to this the human rights dimension which represents supreme observance of the principles that drive democracies.

For, in observance of the universality and indivisibility of human rights we can assess the quality of the relationship between the rulers and the ruled.

So, no, elections are but one indicator of the existence of a state of democracy but nowhere near everything about it. Look near and far. Are we participant and/or distant observers of true democracy?

I never tire of advising my Latin American colleagues that in the Commonwealth Caribbean there is no “democratic relapse” as is being observed in other places in the Americas. Ours is a far more nuanced reality to be observed and dissected. But we are still not where we ought to be.

Locating responsibility

At the height of some of the more punishing pandemic measures when official policy remained challenged by the urge to err on the side of extreme caution (if one erred) there arose pugilistic doubt about the role of personal responsibility in addressing the risks then at hand.

Inspired largely by political preference and apparent ignorance of basic tenets of the development process, one sceptic (who should have known better) accused me of being among an emerging cohort of “personal responsibility evangelists.”

I had at the time argued in favour of people in their individual and collective spaces ensuring that conditions for their own safe conduct prevailed, whatever the official dictates, or lack of them.

We believed that “the government’s” role in the success or failure of the effort to negotiate a great unknown was of perhaps lesser status than communal conduct and care - however much the recognisable impacts of uneven social conditions and personal privilege.

It is the kind of nuance that is being clumsily explored by the Minister of National Security in the face of seemingly unrestrained criminal depravity. There is much to navigate, on that score including police malpractice and incompetence, partisan haze, and the cynical exploitation of grief. So, it’s perhaps best to leave that there … for now.

The point is being far more clearly articulated in the different but not unrelated responses by the informed to rising road deaths, injuries, and property damage.

Yes, the roads are appallingly bad (potholes and even moderate speed don’t mix), we do not believe in proper signage, defective traffic lights are left unattended, there need to be more life-saving highway barriers, route design and construction sometimes do not make sense, ad hoc changes in traffic flows often lead to greater chaos, people operate car repair shops on the street, and there is inarguably deficient enforcement of the law.

There is also room to assess the true deterrent effect of harsher traffic penalties beyond the common wisdom that people respond to that kind of official threat even when the law is not comprehensively policed.

And, yes, I was recently ticketed on a particularly difficult morning - foodless and en route home from the funeral of a friend - for having my cell phone in my hand while driving. On that note, if you hear I have been ticketed for drunk driving or speeding, have the matter thoroughly investigated on my behalf!

That said, $1,000 and 3 demerit points later, I am still kicking myself and not the polite police officer. Some might say he could have spent his time chasing after bandits and robbers. But had it not been for people like me, perhaps he could have been so assigned.

Instead, there remain people who are driving and texting, speeding, drinking/drugging and driving, bullying others in smaller vehicles, breaking the red lights, driving on the shoulder, stopping suddenly in the middle of the road. In the process, a growing number of people are being killed and maimed on our roads.

So, yes, I think traffic tickets are part of the required policing measures even in the broader context of extreme, violent criminal conduct. This was captured, in part, by the broken windows theory of the 1980s which suggested that the diligent interception of “lesser” offences reflecting deviant social behaviour (reckless driving in this case) can have a positive impact on the general environment required for more peaceful, law-abiding societies.

I remember as a reporter over 30 years ago matching traffic deaths and murders as the statistics raced competitively against each other. Today, they are both recognised as significant public health challenges even as murder by deadly weapon now vastly outstrips reckless highway slaughter.

In both cases, there is a strong case for changed personal behaviour. Sharon Inglefield of Arrive Alive is correct: “We have far too many serious collisions on our roads, ALL of which are preventable and avoidable. We must set a better example of road user behaviour, drive defensively, plan our journeys and obey the rules of the road.”

There we go again – “personal responsibility evangelists.” In the meantime, we probably do need more police, more barriers, better road signs, speed cameras, demerit points, fines, traffic lights, speed limits, and speed bumps.

All because these things fill the void left by people who dare not take responsibility for their own wellbeing and the rest of ours. It’s like that time when even a state of emergency proved incapable of getting us to wash our hands.

 (Published in the T&T Guardian on October 23, 2024)

The final innings

(First published in the T&T Guardian on October 16, 2024)

My favourite cricket team anywhere nowadays is the West Indies Women’s T20 squad aka the West Indies (w) … with a small “w”. The “real” West Indies team requires no such qualification since everybody knows when we talk about Caribbean cricket, we are referencing the West Indies (M).

It’s one of those things about “cricket lovers” that the West Indies dominated version of the sport ended on or about August 28, 1995, at The Oval in London. The West Indies (M) scored 692/8 and declared in their final innings.

There meanwhile appears no lasting impression, among this cohort of supporters, of the May 1976 encounter between the West Indies (w) led by Trini Louis Browne vs Australia (W) at Montego Bay in Jamaica. The first ever by a West Indies (w) team.

Much has since happened to render it unsurprising that “cricket lovers” would not have noted with much enthusiasm (if at all) the West Indies’ (w) face-saving win over Scotland on October 6 at the Cricket World Cup – the very day Faf du Plessis’ SLK beat Imran Tahir’s GAW at the CPL T20 final in Guyana.

Apart from the fact that CPL does not present country versus country contests, the mismatch between things “Caribbean” and “the West Indies” has more than once been noted here.

In this regard, I am again interested to know about the keenness with which the recently completed Clive Lloyd and Deryck Murray Caricom Report on “West Indies cricket” will be received when it reaches brutally disinterested ministerial desks in Port-au-Prince, Belmopan, Nassau, and Paramaribo.

The report follows last April’s Caricom Regional Cricket Conference held in T&T and hosted by PM Rowley. Since then, the region has again hosted a flag-waving Caribbean Premier League – “T-Twenny cricket,” to quote one commentator – everything “branded” for maximum returns. A six is no longer merely a six but now a mis-named “maximum” (since we know that more than six runs can be scored off a single ball … but who cares?)

This is not cricket for those who only know about cricket. It is a grand show not to be casually dismissed by “cricket lovers” who preferred Garry’s upturned collar and baggy pants and Wesley’s (Hall, of course) unbuttoned shirt and rolled up sleeves.

We have lived to hear Gavaskar and others declare the physical superiority of “the shorter game” that has brought greater athleticism, an expanded variety of shots, and an enhanced range between “slow” and “fast” bowling.

Today we also know that the statelessness of cricket teams in most instances defines at least the short-term financial viability of the game. It is here that national flags, and the people waving them, serve merely as props and extras - colourful backdrops for exciting, lucrative eyeballs and ears.

Quick, you patriotic types. Tell me which team won CPL 2024. Simple. Now, give me the date for the first game to be played by T&T in the 50 Over Super Cup. If you know the answer to the second question, do you have a national flag ready for flying?

Okay, so we are talking about 20 overs and not 50. T-Twenny as in the first financially viable, Caribbean country-based encounters in 2006. By June 11, 2008, and inspired by its success, convicted Antigua-based, US swindler Allen Stanford was landing a helicopter packed with what was supposed to be a handsome stash of cash at Lord’s cricket ground. That “cash” turned out to be fake $1 bills. Somebody quipped that the game of cricket had been purchased.

I recently retweeted a post in which someone was wondering whether, in a Texas prison, a cellmate has long grown tired of hearing about the time his now half-blind companion “owned” West Indies Cricket.

Such have been the undulating fortunes of a sport that will now appear in its truncated version in the 2028 Olympics – most likely minus a “West Indies” M or w team. Or could it be there will be a West Indies Olympic team?

Comrade Fazeer meanwhile appears doubtful that the CPL version can ride out its current term of dominance, not in a prison cell but against the limits of challenged bank accounts. In my case, I think “West Indies (M)” cricket’s final innings closed long ago, at the failing of CWI lights. Money will be made otherwise.

Maybe the lights will eventually come back on. Look around now and tell me what you see.