The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

The Government's top labour official yesterday argued there was no need for a general strike, which should be the “last thing” trade unions should resort to.

John Pinder, director of labour, told Tribune Business that Obie Ferguson, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) president, had been agitating for this for many years even though today's industrial relations climate does not support such a move.

"For many years I think Mr Ferguson has been trying to get a general strike," Mr Pinder said. "But I keep saying what happened back then with the general strike, you had the minority oppressing the majority.That is not happening right now.

"What is happening right now is different employers are having different views on certain points, and different unions are having different challenges with different things. Not every union is faced with major challenges; some unions are doing pretty good, and some workers are doing pretty good. That’s my point of view. I don’t see sufficient or real pressing issues that they cannot be resolved where it would lead to a general strike.”

“Striking, in my view, should be the very last thing a union resorts to," he added. "That’s when no one is talking and there is a stalemate, and you can’t get anyone to intervene and no one to mediate between the union and employer. That’s when you have a general strike. There is no need to talk about a general strike when people are still talking and trying to negotiate and working things out."

Mr Pinder added that “too many Bahamians try to pre-empt things and jump ahead, and cause some type of demonstration or awareness to be made to the general public, and when it happens they want to take credit and say that ‘if it wasn’t as a result of this the government would not have done this or that’.

"That’s what’s killing us," he said. "I’m not saying Mr Ferguson is grandstanding, but I’m saying that I don’t see us having those kinds of labour issues at a national level to cause a general strike.”

Mr Pinder also disagreed with Mr Ferguson's assertion that the current industrial relations climate is the “worst in 35 years”, telling this newspaper: “I really can’t say that this is the worst time. Again, what I think is happening is there are a lot of unions that have a lot of issues, and if they apply their issues to their employers at this kind of time that they can get sympathy from the general public and, in some cases, even from the Government.

“Unions have always been very active, and have always been playing a role, and sometimes some people would want to suggest that unions have been obsolete. So when you keep making those statements, especially for the union to now raise their heads and raise their voices, so that you can now know they are relevant, when you start to challenge the unions and union leaders they will make it that they are relevant.

"So it may appear as though they are a little more radical than in the past. But a lot of them have their mandate, and they have to do what is necessary to satisfy their membership. I just always hope that they can be reasonable and that the employers can also look at what is happening with them and try to resolve these matters in an amicable way that it doesn’t have to reach to the point where unions are having to bring industrial action against their employers.”