File photos
From left, Dwight Nelson, vice-president of the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union, and Jacqueline Coke-Lloyd, executive director of the Jamaica Employers Federation.

Dionne Rose, Staff Reporter

Trade unions and employers will be aggressively pushing for labour market reforms during next year.

According to Jacqueline Coke-Lloyd, executive director of the Jamaica Employers' Federation (JEF), a number of pieces of legislation need to be repealed to make flexible work arrangements much easier.

"We don't need flexi-time legislation. What we need to do is repeal a lot of the acts, which are now on the books," she said.

Some of these laws include the Shops and Offices Act, The Towns and Communities Act, legislation where women are not allowed to work beyond 10 p.m., among others.

"They don't need to be amended, they just need to be taken off the books because most businesses are operating contrary to [the law] and if you decide that a company is now going to abide by these rules," she said.

Flexible work arrangement has languished in the halls of Parliament for some time where it has been the subject of a joint select committee of Parliament. The last meeting held by this group took place in June 2005. While the committee was reconstituted this year, it has never met.

Mrs. Coke-Lloyd said the legislation will need to be examined in its entirety as well as reviewing how businesses are governed and what makes businesses move in the right direction.

"We assume too much that an employee does not want X, when we have not done the proper research. We need to do more research in order to guide our decisions as far as the legislative framework is concerned," she suggested.

Meaningful labour legislation

Senator Dwight Nelson, president of the Jamaica Confederation of Trade Unions (JCTU), said there needs to be meaningful labour legislation to protect the workers. The JCTU president said in 2006, the trade unions were often under attack from some employers as they sought to reduce workers' benefits.

Meanwhile, Danny Roberts, vice-president of the JCTU, suggested that the parties focus on two or three pieces of legislation and have them amended instead of doing too many things at one time.

Checks made by The Gleaner showed the following pieces of legislation are yet to be amended: Labour Relations Industrial Dispute Act to facilitate the referral of industrial disputes involving non-unionised workers to the Industrial Disputes Tribunal; the Occupational Safety and Health Act; and, the upgrading of penalties under the Employment Agencies Regulation and the Minimum Wage Act.