General Secretary of the Barbados Workers’ Union, Senator Toni Moore has made the statement that the current labour laws need to be enforced and labour legislation needs to be strengthened.
Senator Toni Moore has made the argument that during and after the COVID-19 crisis, Barbados must strengthen labour laws to support the people and give everyone a fair break.
The General Secretary of the Barbados Workers’ Union spoke to the media yesterday at a press conference at Solidarity House and addressed the need not only for Barbados to have stronger labour laws, but also for those laws to be enforced.
“One of the things that the Barbados Workers’ Union at each step in our negotiations as we encounter different scenarios with companies across Barbados and the national level in social partnership, has been that we need to come out this with our labour laws intact, perhaps even strengthened because COVID-19 has shown there are gaps in the legislation,” said Moore.
She also stated that the BWU had signalled the Barbados Labour Department about addressing the issues being tackled by the union because it was not possible to resolve each one on a case by case basis.
“In the first place there is not every company that has a unionised staff and it cannot be that things only apply to the unionised workforce. It means then that you have to have the political will by the government of Barbados and you have to have an enforced labour department, a strong labour department, that can follow through on the issues on the plight of workers that we brought to their attention,” explained the general secretary.
Senator Moore further argued that there was current labour legislation which spoke to many of the challenges being faced by workers. She reiterated that the support of the labour legislation was paramount.
“In too many respects we have labour legislation that should not just be on the books looking pretty in black and white that needs to be enforced. The legislation on the protection of wages, a trade union should not have to be carrying a case to the labour department in 2020 that an employer took money out of a worker’s salary without getting consent to do so,” said Moore.
The Senator stated that the law speaks clearly to such cases and the law needed to be adhered to because there were a number of companies, including law firms which had done it to staff. She explained that the companies seemed unfazed by the penalties and were of the opinion that if the system responded, the case would be concluded so long after the fact, that it would no longer matter.
In the Employment Rights Act, according to the BWU general secretary, there is provision for consultation for six weeks before decisions are made regarding restructuring. However, she stated that because of COVID-19, that six-week period could not work, but the legislation required companies to contact the labour department.
“It places an obligation on that office to ensure that where people were saying they would have to send home persons or we have to do X or Y, that they examine the situation to see if there was anything that could be done to mitigate against some of the things that were happening. But we had cases where employers did not even notify the labour department or if they did, there was no follow-up with the employers,” said Moore.
Moore contended that at the end of all the hardship and challenges caused by the pandemic, Barbados needed to recover with a protected workforce which was properly trained, up-skilled and better positioned to be productive.