AMBASSADOR RICHARD Bernal, head of the CARICOM Regional Negotiating Machinery (RNM) has urged the international community to incorporate and regulate labour mobility in international trade agreements.
Speaking at a recent labour policy conference at the University of the West Indies (UWI) Mona Visitor's Lodge and Conference Centre, Ambassador Bernal lamented the fact that international trade agreements had excluded the issue of labour and its mobility.
"The international trade agreements established rules governing the mobility of all other economic factors and flows except labour," he stressed, adding that labour movements were disorderly and international trade agreements could help to bring order.
LABOUR MOBILITY
The RNM head pointed to two reasons for incorporating labour mobility into trade negotiations. "Firstly," he said, "it provides some kind of framework for managing the labour flow and this can be beneficial to both parties, that is, the supplying and demanding countries. Secondly, it also permits some kind of matching of demand and supply and it introduces some order and predictability to this."
Ambassador Bernal suggested that as a result of the vested interest of Caribbean economies as labour exporting economies, labour movements could be one of the most beneficial avenues for us in international agreements.
Traditionally the Caribbean has not been able "to realise opportunities for exports in international agreements, but the acquiring of foreign jobs can be one way for us to benefit from these agreements," the Ambassador argued.
Continuing, Ambassador Bernal acknowledged that better management of labour movements could increase the benefits to us and give us some leverage. "When we negotiate temporary labour movements or long-term migration we are in the position of supplicants. We have nothing to offer," he pointed out.
Pointing to globalisation as the reason for the current instability in labour mobility, the RNM head said that this phenomenon, "creates both a demand and supply for labour movements and that is inherent in the logic of the global movement. It also creates polarisation between development and underdevelopment, which in turn causes the demand for global labour movement."
The result of this divergence, he argued, was also reflected in income differences and in age structure of labour movements. In the developed countries, the age structure is shifting so much that they are not reproducing the labour force that is required for the economy. On the contrary, in the developing economies, the labour force is larger than the economy can absorb.
MIGRATION
The migration and labour movement locally is at an unprecedented level. According to the 2001 Economic and Social Survey of Jamaica, released by the Planning Institute of Jamaica, employment in farms and hotels in the USA and Canada increased by 4.9 per cent to 13,828 (1.5 per cent of total employment) compared with 13,179 in 2000. The movement from the country is contrasted with movement into the island, which saw some 2,878 work permits issued in 2001 representing a 15.1 per cent increase over the previous year. Approximately 67 per cent of these permits were new, indicating a strong movement of labour to Jamaica.
In this context therefore, Ambassador Bernal declared, "the global labour market needs some regulation." The burdening of the labour system, he said, warranted the calibration of the supply of people willing to work with the types of demand and changes in demand.
