Private sector labour woes

The shortage, far from being attributable to CEPEP and URP alone, has been triggered by the unusually high level of construction work being undertaken in the country today. Indeed, so great has been the construction boom, what with the number of public and private sector projects in Port-of-Spain, for example, and Government’s stepped up housing programme aimed at constructing several thousand units a year, that the shortage it has provoked has resulted in steps being taken by Government for bringing in skilled workers from countries of the English speaking Caribbean.

The TTMA, in a meeting with minister Dumas to discuss the labour void in the private sector, was told that close to 60,000 persons were employed at some point during the year on community projects. The result, said the URP, was that hundreds of new, small contractors got the opportunity to show their worth and profit from the Special Projects Division. The Women’s Programme, they said, was a success story.

But the argument is that this development is putting the screws on labour that was once readily available to the private sector.

The TTMA claims that workers are not keen to work in private enterprise because much more dedication to work is demanded of them than in the URP. There was a consensus however, that the answer did not lie in the programmes being shut down since the business community could not absorb all the persons on the unemployment rolls.

With the knowledge that the number of persons under these programmes will continue to be reduced, new efforts are being made to assist the unemployed access training programmes available and to learn of job opportunities, which may be opened.

In what was a good signal, an agreement was reached whereby the database of registered applicants to the URP and a database of employment opportunities from employers would be exchanged between both parties in a bid to match persons seeking employment with available jobs.

But while the present shortage of available skilled labour has been, principally, due to great demand, another and troubling factor has been the unfortunate unwillingness to take advantage of skills training programmes which would upgrade their efficiency and better prepare them for the expanding job market.

Another factor is wages: CEPEP base salary of $12.50 an hour is difficult to match where the minimum wage is $9 an hour but in a buoyant construction sector the laws of supply and demand will apply.

While CEPEP and the URP might have created an artificial "demand" for labour, thus effectively reducing the supply in the private sector, there is no reason the two parties can’t work together.