OWTU SPEAKS 2001-11-14
WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO OUR SCHOOLS
It seems like only yesterday, when, to be a parent meant something; when, the teacher was looked up to, was well respected – a model of excellence; when, the School Principal was the venerated leader, the key resource person, the moulder of the School’s character, its soul, its psyche and many of the aspirations of the community; when, children of School age were children, and they had manners and when they erred they were disciplined and all concerned accepted the authority of the teacher and Principal. Only yesterday! When did all of that change to the open lawlessness and engulfing barbarism which we now see? What catalyzed that change? How do we reverse it? How may it be remedied? I shudder to think that we will sit back trying to gaze into the year 2020 with a vision that fails to identify that it must be a moron of a mother with an equally and consummately dotish grandmother who would storm into the class room and share blows and inflict an animal assault on the Principal, Ms. Cecilia George was merely doing her job and exercising her responsibility for her good order and discipline over a pupil who accidentally, perhaps, happened to be the offspring of a moron and her superlatively degenerate mother.
Madam Principal must be reassured of the love, support and protection of civilized Trinidad and Tobago. We can afford no less than that, in addition to all else that the Ministry of Education and the Union in the premises, TTUTA, must do. As for the little boy – while he still has a chance, he should be protected from the decadent influences of his ma and grandma. And as for the bullish COWS – Ma and Grandma? – They should be corralled into some distant encampment and left desolate and beyond easy reach of reasonable beings.
Yes, the disgusting, distasteful and morally offensive environment existing in too many of our schools need the application of harsh measures.
Tranquility should not be closed! Why should we interrupt the education of the hundreds of well behaved and decent children – why? to satisfy the deviants’ call of notice and recognition to themselves? We could not just go closing down the Schools each time some – behind – the – folding – blind accident decides to behave like the burro that he may have been spawned and cultured to be. No! We must just throw out the punks and shut the doors against them.
And in any case – a student pulling a knife or any weapon on a teacher should never escape a sound and memorable cut arse. Since children stopped getting licks, is parents and teachers who have been taking a hiding instead. But there are some worthless parents too – fathers and mothers who licentiously plant their seeds and thereafter either abandon or find themselves incapable of caring for their crops. The seedlings then grow into killer weeds and wild orchids. And there are teachers too who could not find their preferred jobs and turn out to be misfits in the profession. And they resort – some of them – to no higher level behaviour than that of some of their decadent charges.
Ever see the male teacher with the foolish earrings in both ears and with his seamless baggy trousers way below his waist and falling below his backsides? And Miss, sometimes with self inflicted difficulty to cover with the half yard mini, larger areas of her voluptuous attractions.
It seems that we have to overhaul, repair, demolish, reconstruct, and redevelop – all of that now – if we are to see 2020.
Just a layman’s view and a simple opinion.
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OWTU SPEAKS 2003-11-05
THE PROPOSED MINIMUM WAGE FOR THE HEAVY CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY
At $30/hr, the energy construction worker, even unskilled as he is sometimes described, will receive only $5,200 base pay per month. The most junior of our doctors in the public service receive a minimum of $17,000/month. So where does Trevor Farrell find the basis for his erroneous conclusion “that the proposed minimum wage for the heavy construction sector will mean that the workers in that sector will make more money than doctors in the public service?” The eminent Doctor of Economics and Lecturer at the University of the West Indies had better check the facts and his arithmetic and not confuse them with his now adopted big Business – low wage – high productivity – huge profits, ideology.
It is like well documented positions in the Economics of Discontent and other Lectures and Discussion Papers are today repudiated by the author himself.
Any investigation into the matter of a higher than the national minimum wage for the transient worker in the heavy energy contraction sector will reveal a number of important facts which the ECA, the Chamber of Commerce, the Trinidad and Tobago Contractors Association and others continue to deny:
Fact 1:
Up to the mid 1970’s/1980 the heavy construction worker including the roustabout or unskilled labourer. Was in receipt of a higher base rate than his secure permanently employed counterpart in the energy sector. This was so, essentially to deal with the question of equity within the working classes in which, on the one hand, the permanently employed was entitled to Vacation Leave, Paid Sick Leave and Pension and Retirement Arrangements etc, while on the other hand, the construction worker, hired by the Contractor – local or foreign – was employed seasonally and for periods of short duration. Many of these workers were present at our education and dialogue programmes in the 70’s and early 80’s when Dr. Farrell and others would have defeated the spurious charges by the employers that demands for decent wages and other small earnings by themselves will spiral inflation. It is very interesting yet so simple; it seems that one’s perspectives could charge merely by the socio-economic and political platforms from which one casts his vision.
Fact 2:
Organizing Construction workers whose employers themselves operate from under their homes or a shed at the construction site is an impossible task for the said workers and the Unions which they may elect to represent them. The employers, particularly the fly by night and more exploitative contractors do not want real Unions in their premises and will always take full advantage of a low wage high unemployment situation as now exists. Those who promulgate that wages should be left open to the market forces of supply and demand need expose no more their support for a high table top for the few and uneven ground for the many who will eat only when cracked corn and the crumbs from the table top are scattered. Because of the severe difficulty with satisfying the requirements of recognition and certification of Unions seeking to represent short term project workers and the inadequacies of the law and the Recognition Board, these temporarily and casually employed workers will not have the benefit of the Collective Bargaining Process.
Fact 3:
The better to do Contractors, whose workers are ununionised, in the heavy construction sector, pay a maximum wage of $18 per hour some pay $15 and all of their employees are classified as labourers although made to perform in technical and other skills which they possess. And it is true, as the President of the Contractors Association inadvertently let slip – ‘that $18 and that $15 big wage include danger and height money etc.
Fact 4:
The Proposed heavy construction minimum wage does not relate in any way at all to domestic and light commercial construction. Therefore Government’s Housing Programme is only being pointed to by the most opportunistic among the detractors of justice and fair play and equity.
There are half a dozen more facts but this programme has only five minutes – so unto another stanza.
This is Errol Mc Leod of the OWTU.