Manning should keep quiet

Last week’s post-Cabinet press briefing exposed once again some nonsensical positions of the Government. First the BWIA issue. We heard that the Government wants the Unions at Bwee to give concessions that would result in a significant reduction in labour costs and that these must be agreed upon within one week as a condition of the government as shareholder injecting funds into the airline.

Now several things are wrong with the Cabinet’s position. In the first place there has already been a significant reduction in the airline’s labour costs. With the retrenchment of some 600 workers earlier this year Bwee was supposed to have cut its labour costs by 20-25 percent. Now this was on top of some concessions that the unions had already agreed to. We must therefore ask — why is it necessary to have further cuts in the company’s airline costs? Is the Government’s position simply the typical knee-jerk reaction that many employers take when faced with a difficult situation? We are all too familiar with the attitude of some employers who seek to take advantage of the weak position of the workers-/unions, which position was due to either some factor in the external environment or to the company’s own poor management. These employers believe that such a moment is one where they can get labour costs down or further weaken the union and therefore set up the scenario for continued low labour costs when the environment changes and the company’s fortunes improve.

Oft times too some employers look for a scapegoat for their own mistakes and seek to either put the blame for the crisis on the workers/unions or take the easy way out with respect to improving the bottom-line, the easy way out being to cut labour costs. The more difficult, but ultimately the only real solution, these lazy/poor managers avoid. Thus issues such as effective and efficient management, forward and strategic planning, proper marketing to increase revenues are ignored, with the result that workers lose their jobs and/or suffer reductions in their compensation only for the company to crash anyways. It was wrong for the Government to have taken a position on BWIA’s labour costs for several reasons. In terms of proper industrial relations, the shareholder should not issue an ultimatum to the unions. On the one hand Mr Manning and his Cabinet colleagues keep referring to the fact that the Government is not interfering in the day-to-day operations of the company, and that such matters are for the Board. Yet in this instance they do interfere! It is a total breach of proper industrial relations. Then, the Government should not arrive at a decision that labour costs must be reduced within the next week without having the benefit of (a) discussions with the unions about the ways that costs could be reduced at the airline (after all, labour costs are not the only things that can be addressed); (b) the outcome of the consultant’s report on the status of the company and the best strategy forward; and (c) the due diligence report that has been commissioned.

This information may well identify that the problems are not to be found in Bwee’s labour cost structure at all. The only argument put forward by the Government was that “its Directors stated that the aircraft were overstaffed”. That’s not good enough. But as is usual Mr Manning and his Cabinet are putting the cart before the horse. The same is true with respect to the crime situation. At the press briefing we were told by the Prime Minister that our escalated crime situation has occurred because the political crisis in Venezuela caused that nation’s security forces to take their eye off the ball of the criminal drug trade. The result of this was that the drug traffickers out of Colombia and those involved in the trade here in Trinidad and Tobago and those in Venezuela decided to make hay while the sun was shining, and that there has therefore been an upsurge in activity in this country. Now this may well be true but the Prime Minister making such a statement is quite ludicrous. For one thing, it will create a diplomatic issue with our nearest neighbour — Venezuela. Secon-dly, the population of this country is really not concerned at all about the reason why crime has gotten worse. What they want is for the Government to do something about it. If therefore Mr Manning can identify the external factor of instability in another country as the cause for more gun-running into Trinidad and Tobago, we have to ask — what have you done about that intelligence information?

Information and intelligence with respect to crime are not gathered so that someone like the Prime Minister can make a comment that will make everyone think that he is wise and all-knowing. It is gathered so that the criminals can be prosecuted and that the evidence leads to convictions. In this regard this country is abysmally poor. I heard a presentation recently by a former senior person in the security services of this country and he stated that the problem is that we don’t have a culture and/or modus operandi of intelligence in the fight against crime. He further opined that given the nature of major crimes — drugs, money laundering etc — it was absolutely necessary to utilise intelligence in the fight. Such an approach means that the security forces can know in advance about criminal activity and take action before to prevent crime from happening, rather than waiting for it to take place and then try to “catch the bad-guy”. The latter is perhaps more glamorous since it looks great in the press to see the headline — “murderer captured”. This was the style of the late Commissioner Randolph Burroughs, but it is more PR than crime fighting. What we need is to be able to lop the heads off of the major gangs and prevent them from functioning. It is of no use to the population to hear the police state that a particular individual was “well known to the police and was suspected in a number of crimes”. The issue is — why wasn’t that knowledge converted to prosecutions and convictions? Until it happens we will have an ever escalating situation of violence. And as for Mr Manning’s comment about the killings being internecine gang battles for control and that the average citizen is not affected except in some rare occurrences of “collateral damage”, well it would be wise for the Prime Minister to either retract it or learn that if he has nothing sensible to say, he should not speak.