Do you remember when we were all children and thought riddles were the most sophisticated word games we all played? We thought it was hilarious to ask, "When is a door not a door?" The answer, (in case you have no children at home under the age of seven) is, "When it’s ajar." I remember when I actually thought that was funny, not realising it was, indeed, sophisticated. A very sophisticated way of teaching us that words can be very deceptive, that they, depending on the context in which they are used, and the way in which they are pronounced, can mean very different things.
Handling industrial relations grievances can often equally depend on the different way words are used, particularly when there are distinctions between the contexts in which they are applied. Take the words “worker” and “employee”. And the word “manager”.
When is a professional employee a worker entitled to take a grievance to the Industrial Court to have it resolved there? And when are they forbidden to use the comparatively free services of the court? When are they a manager? These distinctions where differences exist are not just the food stock of riddles; they can lead to some very expensive human rights violations and court cases.
Under common law, I am informed by a colleague, any one working under a contract of employment is, logically, an employee. Employee/employment contract, geddit? He explained. I got it. Doesn’t it irritate you when someone hits you with logic and rationality when the Industrial Relations Act (IRA) won’t let you use them?
Because even the Trinidad head of a branch of NASA, if such a position existed, with three PhDs and an income greater than the President’s, is still an employee with the same industrial relations status as the receptionist’s assistant whose salary is only marginally above the minimum wage.
Unless the board of directors can show how, and in what way, the chief executive is responsible for the formulation of NASA policy and/or the effective control of the NASA undertaking or business, he, or she is not. Policy and the architecture of effective control is decided by the board of directors, not one director – the collective board.
There have been, for many years, requests from stakeholders for a reworking and amendment of our labour legislation by organisations representing the trade union movement, the employers' associations and people within the government establishments themselves. Tripartite organisations set up by sequential governments’ have made recommendations that have come, gone, and been ignored, as is our way.
Hardly surprising, since each of the representative organisations are only very small and select fractions of the groups they represent. Selected by governments that shift and change. Each change rubbishes even partial agreements made by its predecessor. We are all aware of the political culture that enables, even demands, this pattern. We live it.
Colonial-era laws passed on to us via the Legislative Council assumed that someone who was a manger was appointed by t
