One of the more interesting features of the recent report on the impact of the global economic and financial crisis on the labour market in Latin America and the Caribbean prepared by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the International Labour Organization (ILO) is its assessment of likely changes in employment patterns arising out of job losses in the formal employment sector. One of those responses, the report says, is that an increasing number of family members who, in the past, had not been “economically active” are likely to seek “some other form of labour activity.” This option, the report says, is likely to be exercised by teenagers, the elderly, even children.
The report also makes the point that formal businesses are likely to seek to reduce their wage bills by resorting to “more informal work contracts” a circumstance which it correctly concludes will lead to “more precarious employment and less social protection.”
These are important observations because they point to some of the likely negative social consequences of the unfolding crisis which could continue to impact on countries – particularly the poorer countries – long after the global economic crisis has come and gone. What ECLAC and the ILO have done in their study is to point to the need for countries like Guyana to pay close attention to the possible social fallout from the current crisis and the significant, longer term social deformities that these could leave behind.
While the point is being continually made that Guyana is yet to experience major job losses resulting from the ensuing crisis, the view expressed by the World Bank in its recent analyses of the global economic climate that the crisis could grow even worse in poor countries before the global economy turns the proverbial corner, cautions us about the dangers of premature analysis. In this regard it should be noted that declining global demand remains a feature of the crisis, that its effects on the bauxite and forestry products sectors have already been felt and that the rest of the country’s manufacturing sector is hurting…badly; and since there are as yet no clear indications as to just how long it will be before there is an upturn in global demand, who is to say that further job losses do not lie ahead.
The point about the two aforementioned issues raised by ECLAC and the ILO is that we are compelled to be mindful of the likely social consequences of the crisis, in this case, the consequences for a possible further proliferation of child labour in our society and the likely serious erosion of standards of social protection for our workers.
In the latter regard the views expressed by ECLAC and the ILO regarding the likely resort by employers to “informal work contracts” could expose large sections of the work force to less than wholesome conditions of employment with implications for job security, wage levels and safety and health conditions. A concern here is that these possible threats to labour standards coincide with the reality of a weak, divided and manifestly ineffective labour movement that lacks any real clout as far as the protection of workers rights are concerned. Add to this the fact that, at any rate, unionized workers number less than a quarter of the total work force in Guyana and the potential for worsening worker exploitation becomes all the more apparent.
There can be no clearer signal to the country’s divided trade union movement than what ECLAC and the ILO have had to say about the danger of “less social protection” for workers and the attendant possibility of increased worker exploitation. If the threat that the rights of large sections of the work force may well stand imperiled by the possibility of a significant erosion of critical elements of the culture of collective bargaining – which is in fact the raison d’etre of the labour movement – is not sufficient to cause labour to undertake a serious re-evaluation of its tenuous position, it runs a serious risk of becoming altogether irrelevant as a mainstream social organization.
Such an evaluation of labour’s circumstances cannot ignore the political underpinnings of its problems, including the continual weakening of the movement – which means of course that government has a responsibility, a critical one, for engaging labour as a partner in what is in fact a collective responsibility to ensure that wanton worker abuse does not become an institutionalized consequence of the economic crisis. However wide the divide may appear at this time, much more is at stake than arrogance, false pride and meaningless and counter productive political posturing.
The second and equally alarming concern raised in the ECLAC/ILO report has to do with the likelihood that as unemployment in the formal sector rises – and both the World Bank and ECLAC predict even further increases in the level of employment in the hemisphere – we could witness a further increase in child labour as a means of subsidizing family incomes.
Here again the report raises an issue that has been on the front burner of the national agenda for some time. While the position of the administration appears to be that child labour is not a major problem in Guyana, the truth is that we really have no reliable idea as to how serious the problem is and whether or not it may be growing worse. Nor is there any persuasive evidence that we possess the institutional capacity to cope adequately with the problem.
If the evidence of the number of children who are already involved in what the ECLAC/ILO report describes as “some sort of labour activity” is anything to go by, we already have a fairly serious problem on our hands which will only grow worse if the formal labour market contracts further and more children are required to seek work to subsidise family incomes.
The protection of jobs in the formal sector provides at least a partial response to the problem of child labour, since, where adults have access to decent, remunerative work children are less likely to have to be pressed into service. Beyond this, of course, there is the existing problem of high poverty levels and dysfunctional families, circumstances which have already forced children into unwholesome exploitative work arrangements that often have terminal implications for their intellectual development and their physical and social well being.
The real value of the warnings that have come from the ECLAC/ILO report have to do with the need to pay simultaneous attention to both the social and economic implications of the unfolding economic and financial crisis. What this means is that the strengthening of our social infrastructure including our social services is as important as the protection of our economic and financial architecture. The two must be made to work in tandem if we are to seek to protect ourselves from the worst excesses of a crisis, not least those consequences that could extend way into the future.