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UNIONS MUST REMAIN INDEPENDENT
June 25, 1999
Sir/Madam,
The hullabaloo of June 19 and its prelude seems destined not to be the usual 9-day wonder in this land seeming short term memory.
Events in the aftermath will not allow the issue of the attempts to line up the trade unions behind either of the two so-called major political parties to go away. In fact, these are outward and visible signs of an inward and cancerous infliction that is eating away at the unity and effectiveness of the trade union movement.
To recount some of the events:
1. The NUGFW whose leadership left the stage on June 19 have since raised fictional charges of "violence" by workers who expressed their indignance against what they perceive as political emasculation of their unions by booing Mr Guisseppi on the NATUC platform.
They have also announced their intention to deal with certain unions. Hopefully, this spirited response unlike any seen on issues affecting workers by most unions in recent times, will not include the totally senseless decision to leave NATUC and further fragment the movement, a development will leave the controllers of wealth and power in stitches over their achievement.
2. The UNC has launched its advertisement on TV with an appeal to workers to support this benevolent government which has taken with its NIS hand what it has given with its Minimum Wage hand.
So, what's new?
3. The PNM leader (who incidentally says local government elections is a referendum on the government, but not a test of his leadership (sic)), boasted about the PNM's interference in the Labour Congress, denounced UNC interference in unions and proceeded to invite NATUC to meet the Executive of his party.
I suppose we are to assume that Patrick intends to strengthen the independence of the unions by this activity. Pity he didn't think it necessary to disguise his crude attempt to have the unions line up behind his wagon even by inviting the unions to talk with the Opposition.
Such is the sophistication of this desperado.
4. UNC Minister of Public Utilities has dragged the privatisation of the postal service and the debacle created by his deal with one union which was promised recgonition status onto the elections platform and then yesterday dragged the union leader onto the platform of ribbon cutting which is an integral part of their thinly veiled campaigning.
In all of this the workers must see the absolute necessity to oppose two things.
Firstly, the attempts by these political parties whose programmes are partisan to the interests of the rich and powerful and their cronies and sycophants in the trade unions to turn their basic defence organisations into horses tied to the wagons of those whose interests are completely opposed to those of the workers.
Secondly, the attempts by those who want to abandon the workers' interests and become representatives of capital posing as trade union leaders, to divide the workers and disarm them by lining them up behind these so-called major parties.
The independence of the trade unions is under serious threat, a threat which has now burst out like a boil that has burst into to a nasty bobo on the surface of trade union unity and effectiveness.
The unions must be partisan to the interests of their members, other workers and others whose rights as members of the society are sacrificed in the interests of the privileged.
The workers must now fight to ensure that the days of the divide in the trade union movement are not brought back to render their struggles even more ineffective.
They must now advance their own agenda, their own demands and make them the agenda of NATUC, not the divide-and-rule agenda of the rich and powerful which a few renegades are trying to impose on the unions.
HOMEPAGE
Copyright © Clyde Weatherhead
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