A RARE development in industrial relations this week has seen workers staging a protest demonstration against the quality of representation offered by their unions. This is the more surprising since the protest was against the National Workers Union and the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union, the two major worker organisations in the island.
The disgruntled workers of the National Water Commission (NWC), obviously acting without sensible leadership, took the familiar indisciplined route of blocking gates at the Marescaux Road main office. It is a tactic in contravention of the legal requirement of restricted picketing allowed in instances of strike action sparked by a wage dispute. It is also an embarrassing exposure of a decline in the quality of union leadership which discredits acceptable standards of industrial relations.
The incident also prompts reflection on the difficulties involved in negotiating fair compensation for workers in times of economic constraint. In this connection, it is worth noting that one of the most difficult of recent wage negotiations was resolved only by resorting to unusual arrangements.
Instead of the normal result of a package of salary increases, the police impasse was ultimately resolved by agreement on one-off payments hefty enough to satisfy police officers who had been negotiating for more than a year.
The difficulty of negotiating in the shadow of a Memorandum of Understanding which limits the increases demanded, is clearly inimical to routine bargaining for public sector workers.
Worker indiscipline is not unusual even in normal circumstances; hence the phenomenon of the wildcat strike when impatience with the pace of negotiations prompts the rank and file to ignore the wishes of union leaders. This is more likely when rivalry between unions to increase membership - and thus, union dues - can be a debilitating factor which undermines discipline.
In the instant case of the NWC workers, this should not be a factor as both major unions share joint representation of the workforce. Even so, it should not be beyond the capacity of the union leaders to restrain workers in an essential service and insist that they act responsibly.
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