By Larry Vaughan, First Vice President, St. Kitts-Nevis Trades & Labour Union — April 18, 2021
Between March 2020 and the present, peoples across the globe have been confronted by economic and social challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Governments have sought answers in stimulus spending; businesses have lobbied governments. But workers — the principal producers and consumers of goods and services in any economy, and the people who pay all the taxes — are too often left out of the discussion. It is as though there is an understanding that workers are not capable of articulating their own interests. The unwillingness to include workers in discussions of national significance suggests we have not recognised that business failures impose significant social and economic challenges on the ability of the people to provide for themselves and their families.
The ILO principle of Tripartism requires that states engage in economic corporatism based on tripartite agreements between employers, trade unions, and government. Saint Kitts and Nevis adopted this principle through Section 43 of the Protection of Employment Act, establishing a National Tripartite Committee on Labour Standards. This Committee is mandated to advise the government on all labour matters including the formation and implementation of national policies on basic conditions of employment and the health and safety of workers. Yet the proposed policy of mandatory vaccination for workers has not yet come before this Committee. All we have is public loud talk.
When one listens to Prime Minister Harris’s remarks of 7 April 2021 — “We need every employer not just to say, but to insist that every employee must be vaccinated” — one did not hear consultation; one heard a directive. When one reads the missives put out to staff by local businesses, the diction, mood and tenor range from insulting, intimidating and demanding. Rather than sitting at the table with workers as equal partners, workers are being approached as underlings who must do what the lords and masters dictate. This is wrong. The workers are too important to be treated that way. All workers deserve only respect. And therefore as workers, let us demand the respect we deserve.