The thorny question of what constitutes justifiable absenteeism has remained on the front burner of industrial-relations problems, without lessening as the pandemic continues.
It's mainly complicated by two factors: first, the current (and shifting) guidelines being issued as to mandatory days in isolation or quarantine after testing for covid; and second, the unfortunate tendency of some people to slyly claim exposure repeatedly in order to justify an unofficial extension of their vacation.
The vexed question of justification for mandatory vaccinations aside, the day-to-day problems of productivity that have bedevilled commerce and productivity in both the public and private sectors for years remain urgent, particularly in a situation when the Minister of Finance and/or leading economists both local and international have repeatedly warned the nation of tight budgetary measures.
Neither problem is unique to Trinidad and Tobago. The whole Caribbean, which is often divided on other matters, shares a brotherly connection on this one.
Over several decades, industrial-relations practitioners have pondered why there cannot be labour legislation that is consistent throughout the Commonwealth Caribbean.
Commercial organisations are actively encouraged to operate throughout the area and all those who can actually do, or try to, share the problems of shipping, air transport and foreign exchange as well as competition with external sources.
As inter-island commerce grows, any one company may have branches in several different territories. As a necessary method of developing staff expertise, employees move from one territory to another, giving rise to issues such as which country's labour standards apply in disciplinary matters: the country of original employment, or the country in which the employee is currently working, and in which the disciplinary issue first arose?
The wording in contracts of employment themselves cannot cover every possible exigency that will arise. Human behaviour is a moveable feast and is endlessly inventive when it comes to dealing with sudden opportunities for individual advantage.
Individual trade unions, on the other hand, for some reason have not developed to cover the region, so have to deal with the laws only in the one country in which they are located, so an employee covered by membership of a union in one Caribbean country will not have coverage when they move to a branch of the same company, but in a different country.
This, of course, is contrary to the principle of labour unity that unions proclaim, diminishes their potential effectiveness, and may act as a disadvantage to individual employees in a regional environment, but is unlikely to change in my lifetime.
Uniform Caribbean labour standards would benefit all. Several countries such as Montserrat and Bahamas, St Lucia and Anguilla have clear and logical labour codes, for example.
Others, TT among them, do not, and practitioners depend on situational variances and cases argued in industrial courts (TT, Antigu
