Thursday, July 11, 2013

Labour Ministers to Meet Regularly

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Movement of labour without a supranational political decision-making body is a very problematic issue. It is time for countries of the region to look more closely and meaningfully at the fundamental issues related to labour demand and the strategic demand and planning for human resources in each country.

There is too much distortion and a singular lack of clarity regarding the demand for human resources in the region. One cannot say that for poorly natural resource endowed countries, that the human resource is the most important resource of the country, and then turn around and encourage an influx of people who displace our very feeble attempts at developing our own.

Currently, there is an oversupply of labour in almost every regional country -- except for menial labour or jobs. Other than this, where exactly does this slack labour market exist?

We have had this experiment in Barbados already, where there was as surge of Guyanese into that country because of the greater purchasing power of the Barbados dollar based on parity rate with the US dollar, and an artificial World Cup housing construction boom.

After that spectacular policy failure, the Guyanese found themselves and for many other reasons persona non grata.

An influx of cheaper costing labour will not help Saint Lucia, but only push up the unemployment rate for resident nationals much higher that the current rate, with serious social ramifications.

Moreover, we are not at present in a construction boom, as such, with a labour shortage in this sector. Neither can it be reasonably argued that an influx say, of lower-paid agricultural workers will guarantee a significant decline in the cost of production of banana production enough to create a competitive advantage for Saint Lucia.

That said, there is no harm in harmonizing legislation that seeks to improve terms and conditions of work for all types of human resources employed throughout the region, and for that matter the whole world.

July 12, 2013 at 5:15 PM

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