OWTU SPEAKS 2004-01-30
Pier1 Red Fete
It is the distraction by other important issues and the sometimes unpredictable exigencies of the job of President General of OWTU that I would from time to time miss or fail to do fresh editions of our programmed –“OWTU SPEAKS”. Such a situation existed last Monday and Wednesday and as a result, the programmer audience was regretfully subjected to probably the nuisance of two repeats of last Friday’s edition. Sincere apologies are offered as a results of the foregoing a number of important intervening issues escaped comment but the Pier1 Red fete outrage is too important to go unscathed although somewhat belatedly: go unscathed although somewhat belatedly: I recall a well known proverb which says that `When the wine is in, the wit is out`. And my suggestion is that an inebriated fool with a gun in his waist and, surrounded by a crowd of soca – frenzied revelers is he a potential ass of a weapon of proportional destruction.
We must hope however that the police investigations will prove that those were not the circumstances in which young Kevin Cato was fatally shot and 23 year old Ryan Solomon wounded last Saturday night. The Cato and Solomon families` cry for swift justice for their children’s death and wounds must not go as faint voices in the wilderness. If newspaper reports are accurate and true, there is cause for even greater concern by decent and long suffering folks over the seeming total breakdown of discipline and good order at all levels of the society. Nobody is protecting anybody and everybody is serving himself. One was beginning to conclude that the lawlessness was isolated to the more neglected and depressed areas of the country such as would have occasioned the Prime Minister’s “Meet the people tour” in those communities.
We have been debating the cause and seasonal occurrences of school violence; well some folks at very high official levels have been seeking to convince us that school violence has traditionally been during the intercool football season and now at carnival time. That debate continues with the introduction of new evidence that the lure for financing for carnival activities and outfits is the catalyst that is making drug pushes of school children. Indeed the situation is becoming curiouser and curiouser. And they seem intent on hiring the services of social scientists who suggest solutions which in their consideration apparently overlook entrenched causal antecedents. Suggestions that the police must be friendlier are by themselves wishful, to say the least. The police officer is a product of his environment as is the teacher who is untrained and incapable as is the child of the single parent home that is denied the benefit of an equitable wealth distribution, proper social infrastructure and a system that is people focused. We are precipitously poised for the slippery slide down the slope to barbarism if strong, decisive and informed action is not taken now!
Have a good weekend! Enjoy the fete! Wine on the bumper but please avoid bumping onto a police man.
PEACE
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OWTU SPEAKS 2004-01-23
A reflective symptom of what is developing in society
Hear the newspapers headlines: “Blackboard Jungle; Students at War; Chaos Reigns; St James Secondary Student chopped; Belmont Junior Secondary Shut down; Siparia Senior Pupil Suspended - Teacher Beaten; Police Arrest Central Students”. And these are only those incidents that have been reported in the media -
I am sure. Thank God its Friday and a well deserved respite from the reality of school violence and its very evident contiguity with the general indiscipline and growing barbarism that seems to be characterizing lie in Trinidad and Tobago. We must be optimistic however, that our problems are not insurmountable and that appropriate resolutions can be found or,2020 will promise only an industry of crime and hooliganism to be staffed by the miscreants, hoodlums and other lumpen characters that have been bred and manufactures in single parent homes an on out of step and inappropriate school system. Yesterday the Education Minister seemed overwhelmed by the enormity of the task facing her Minister to bring back discipline and civility to the classroom and the precincts of the school. We empathies with the Minister but we have doubts that her ten (10) point action plan would curb school violence. The problem is beyond the school you see! What is happening at the school is reflective symptoms of what has been developing in the society. The problem is a serious and endemic and sociological one, bred by a lack of political will and economic direction over the past few decades and now requiring decisive political action with attendant sociological under pinning. Which retired policeman or soldier as a school warden, or which of the other nine (9) action points and I am not being intentionally cynical here which of those will influence a change or redirection of mind in any of those children who must go back every evening to an existence behind a folding blind which blocks out sight but not sound from the low closed, lewd and lascivious behavior of a dependent parent, off with another step father or step mother.
Already one newspaper story suggests that students are afraid of neither police nor death. How does the action plan affect such students who go to school because there is no place else to go until enlistment in URP or CEPEP or some other programmed of underdevelopment. We had been breeding violence in our homes and community and therefore our school when we failed to engage in economic reorganization, equitable wealth distribution and social infrastructural and an across the board human capital stock development. Instead, we promoted and made institutions of programs such as DEWD, LID, ETP and succeeded in crashing a psyche which held real potential for growth and development – Well sadly, today’s problem child is the product of the dependent, untrained, live today – dead tomorrow, don1t care a damn lascivious parent who is himself in a directionless competition with his unfortunate off spring.
All of that combined with the less than adequately managed school system, the pedagogical unsoundness of the Republic Reader, and other instruments – I still have my students` companion though-by Wilfred D Best. Some teachers – albeit a few on the lunatic fringe – who are paid but do not work and sundry other foibles begging to be addressed, provide for a most explosive youth cocktail. But, thank God it’s Friday.
Peace and an enjoyable weekend.
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OWTU SPEAKS 2004-01-21
CALYPSONIANS SHOULD NOT ALWAYS BE TAKEN LITERALLY
The bacchanalian influence and what I prefer to identify as the serio-comical content in the calypso will suggest that the calypsonian be not always taken literally in his offerings.
Our society's puritans, hypocrites and other inane pontifical commentators with transparent political agendas would have shut down and banned calypso a long time ago if we had let them.
If one were to objectively 'face reality', little emphasis, if any, will be put on the hook line 'kidnap dem' as one traces the message that it is big people - society exemplars - who are allegedly in the main, behind the high incidence of crime. I would not put it the way that Weston Rawlins has put it but I am not Cro Cro and I would not examine either whether it is insensitivity on his part or failure to detect parody on my part.
Did we not have the Clown Prince of Calypso, Mighty Cypher suggesting that a nest of jack Spaniards be put in Ian Smith's pants? And Calypso Icon, Leroy Calliste, 'Black Stalin' with 'Bun Dem'? Literally, if that was the focus, both of these Cultural Ambassadors would have been seen to be promoting violence and illegality. Or do we suggest that the Lady Calypsonian who sang that rapists be bobbed was advocating lawlessness? I think that anti-Cro Cro commentators are as whimsy and narrow minded as Weston Rawlins is deemed to be insensitive. The Bacchanal in calypso and its serio comical that is its combination of the serious and the comical - will always provoke sensitivities or it will not be calypso.
Keith Smith's just a position of calypso Princes 'Kidnappers cure' with Cro Cro's 'Face Reality' makes the point.
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OWTU SPEAKS 2004-01-14
MORAL, ETHICAL CONDUCT AND ETIQUETTE
There were two nearly similar spectacles yesterday, one in lower Enterprise and the other in the Upper House- so –called.
The Enterprise event saw the extent of an area of poverty disguised in confessed involvement in illegal practices, and a bare backed and clearly frustrated man relating an incomprehensible tale of woes to the Prime Minister and his touring party. I found the barebacked one to be a bit lumpen and disrespectful – he should have worn a shirt if he had one, especially as he elected or was chosen to speak for his deprived and oppressed fellow enterprise Villagers. There is no doubt that there are extreme cases of poverty in some of the ‘HOT’ Spots that Mr. Manning is currently visiting. There is no doubt also that these places are hard hit by the scourge of unemployment and the incidences of poor government and an inequitable distribution of the country’s wealth over the years – but there is a more damaging poverty of morals, education, ethical conduct, good manners and etiquette – that is afflicting us and that will not go away by 2020 if nothing is done NOW! Mr. Bareback representative may well have been copying and taking example from the higher ups and big sawatees in the place, which brings me to yesterday’s other spectacle: One used to know the UPPER HOUSE to be that place where the practice of statesmanship and the member’s total conduct epitomized the national character and spirit and the essential pillars on which we are founded. Such conduct we have always expected to be above the narrowness of the Lower House’s cut and thrust across the political floor.
Sadly, today the Lower House is at its lowest with some of its members prostituting their privileges and the UPPER HOUSE is beginning to resemble a court of real clowns and jesters rubbing (Robin) the Senate of the respect it once commanded.
I remember the 1976 – 81 House of Parliament – I was there as a member of the Lower House. I remember Explainer’s ditty – 1979, I think it was – “KICKSIN IN PARLIAMENT’. Explainer was very skillfully giving a Carnival type bacchanalian humour to the sometimes exuberant but civil exchanges and repartee that had characterized the parliamentary politics of that time. But we did serious business then – it was no Mickey Mouse, market rat and robin asininity as we see today. The Parliament then-certainly the Lower House – dealt with such issues as the Education Act and the Teaching Service Act to give “COMFUT” to the revolutionary change to Teacher representation in the business of Education; Houses before Horses ; Tobago Self Government ; Point Lisas Development ; the BWIA/MC Donnell Douglas/ O’Hollaran – Prevatt axis of corruption; the Pensions Act of 1966 and the Insurance Act 1980 and a host of Opposition sponsored Motions and Bills aimed at improving the lives and living standards of the ordinary citizen among others. We opposed and maintained a challenge against the then venerable Prime Minister’s abandonment of central Planning and his assertion that ‘money was no problem’, in 1978, but, that too we did withy respect and sometimes taunted Vernon, Hector, Muriel and the Nariva MP- his name is escaping my memory now- he lost all his hair and had a full crop covering his boldness again, all in one fortnight – ah! Hardeo Hard hat was his name.
The then speaker too would sometimes inject his own eye raising humour like the time when he called a member to order for engaging in too much foreplay during that member’s contribution to an important debate.
But yesterday’s spectacle in the August Senate Chamber had gone too far as if to suggest that any fool with papers has a right to subject a fast becoming impatient population to the ravings and rantings of an ASS.
Ordinary folk must themselves mean no disrespect but we are entitled to demand better of Robin Montano.
Mr. Senate Vice President – We beg to move!
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OWTU SPEAKS 2004-01-09
THE INCREASE IN STAPLE PRICES
The price of all staples have either already gone up or are soon to go up. It is with bated breath therefore that we await the sermon of those among the big business armchair economic prognosticators who decry wage and salary increases and see them as draw backs to viability and competitiveness – their obsequiousness with anti-worker, anti-poor people doctrine has always numbed their thinking against ordinary common sense.
Within the last nine (9) months to a year, the price of flour and therefore bread, went up. Shortly thereafter the then Consumer Affairs Minister was literally begging the chicken mogula to cut the steep price increases which they were demanding for their genetically altered and hormonally inflated white fowl. The Minister did well but the price of chicken went up nonetheless. And as we speak another increase is threatened on this white meat. The fishermen are the only ones, it seems, who are hardly ever allowed to get away with the banditry – perhaps only because they are not very capitalistically organized.
Between the price increases on flour and chicken and when ‘foot-in-the-month’ Chancellor of the Exchequer raised the price of transportation fuels – gasoline- last October, there were a series of surreptitiously foisted price increases on food and other regular consumables. And of course we are now beginning to see, or is it feel the effects of the Budget adjusted gasoline price in addition to those other prices that have come about by stealth and greed.
A 15% increase in the price of rice and a soon to be announced increase in the price of sugar and milk are a means to steal the recent negotiated improvements in workers’ pay and retirees’ pittances. It is so easy to anticipate the responses of the dunces and apologists for ultra capitalist orthodoxies such as we find in some Employer Federations – confusing themselves as they are known to do and obfuscating the issues as they try to connect foreign fuelled inflation with internal inefficiencies and disorganization. They will blame everything on the situation with Iraq, 911 and miniscule Sectoral labour costs. They have not a clue about anything that makes good sense.
And all of that is matched only by the mistakes and a foolish arrogant posture at another level. The Multinational Corporation of which ever home base does nothing for free. They boast that theirs is not the business of handing out free lunches or maybe in the case at hand-free breakfastes. They demand something in return for any favour granted – the building of a petrochemical complex to a plane ride to see the King. Whether it is British Gas now or Texaco of the 1970’s, Exxon Mobil Repsol of 2003 or the reformed British Petroleum pf 1969 they are all the same. They exploit the naïve country boy come to town with a ride in a glitzy jet and dinner at the King’s manor.
There is no room in politics and international business affairs for the honest fool.
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OWTU SPEAKS 2004-01-02
2004 A YEAR OF OPTIMISM
Welcome to the OWTU Speaks and special best wishes for a Peaceful, Happy and Satisfying New Year to all of Trinidad and Tobago. It is with much optimism that we view and welcome the New Year 2004. 2003 was visited by many unpleasant events and unfortunate occurrences but we see the lights of the village gleaming through the rain and the mist (To quote Long fellow). And on the condition that we have good and caring government, it is our view that 2004 can see the beginnings of those fundamental changes to ensure that we all respect the principles of social justice and therefore believe that the operation of the economic system should result in the material resources of the community being so distributed as to subserve the common good, that there should be adequate means of livelihood for all, that labour should not be exploited or forced by economic necessity to operate in inhumane conditions but that there should be opportunity for advancement on the basis of recognition in the commencement to our Constitution. It makes nonsense of any effort to ‘Developed Nation Status in 2020’ if the foundations for such status are not begun now and in a very tangible sense. In other words, we must be building our future in the present. A serious paradigm shift to fundamental change must also see an immediate transformation from the too regular foot-in-the-mouth comic comments by platitudinarian leaderships. The status change about which we so glibly speak must engage all the people and must possess the dynamics of a movement.
We see much properity coming from our Oil and Gas resources with the workers’ commitment to productive work, contributing to higher improved margins and with prevailing good world crude and product prices. How that prosperity will be distributed is the $B question. Already we see unfair concessions being again made to the multinational.
In very difficult and trying circumstances over the past twelve (12) months, our producers of the national wealth and particularly OWTU members in Oil and Gas, Electricity, Manufacturing and the services sector delivered on their commitment to the production of essential goods and services. As the workers’ representative and bargaining agent, the OWTU made benefits not the least among which have been Pensions in Payment at T&TEC, Power Gen, Petrotrin, Trinmar and NP. These improvements are being implemented now with some handsome retroactive payments to take place by month’s end February 2004. many wage and salary settlements second to none have been negotiated with important Profit share inclusions. We have strengthened, over the past fifteen (15) months, the foundations of the O.W.T.U. and enhanced its meaning as the mast Bastion of workers’ defence.
In 2004 we shall go even further than we traversed last year.
We continue to commit to service to the workers and country.
May 2004 be truly Peaceful, Purposeful, Productive and with much Progress for all or citizens.