ADDRESS BY THE PRIME MINISTER OF JAMAICA
THE MOST HON. Pl. PATTERSON, ON, PC, QC, MP
PRME MINISTER OF JAMAICA
AT THE SECOND CARIBBEAN ENTERPRISE FORUM
JAMAICA PEGASUS HOTEL
JANUARY 23-25, 2003
"GETTING READY FOR GLOBAL COMPETITION:
CHALLENGES FOR POLITICAL, BUSINESS AND LABOUR
LEADERSHIP"
Salutations.
Let me join in extending my own words of welcome
to you all - both local participants and our colleagues
from the Caribbean and beyond.
While the wonders of technology have changed the
modes of communication, there is still no real
substitute for personal contact and interaction.
UWI LIBRARIES
I thank you for inviting me to give the keynote
address at this very important Forum and suggesting
that I take as my subject the critical issue: Getting
ready for Global Competition: Challenges for Political,
Business and Labour Leadership.
The sponsors of the Forum - The Programme for the
Promotion of Management Labour Cooperation
(PROMALCO) - are to be commended for the work
you have been doing in advancing what must become
the central aim in the effort to see Jamaica and the
Caribbean survive the adversities, and seize the
opportunities presented by globalisation. You have
rightfully concentrated your focus on effecting the
critical change from the traditional method of worker
management relations - that of confrontation at the
workplace - to the promotion of cooperation and joint
problem solving between management and labour.
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It is my fervent hope that you will do everything to
publicise and promote this ideal so that enterprises
still caught 1n old-style, destructive labourmanagement
conflict can realize that it is possible to
develop collaborative partnerships.
The tools, which you have adopted, to this end -
relevant research, information-gathering, training,
study tours and seminars - are indeed the best
instruments.
I therefore congratulate the International Labour
Organsation (ILO); the US Department of Labour; the
Caribbean Employers Federation and the Caribbean
Congress of Labour - the major partners in the
PROMALCO - for these initiatives. They demonstrate
that you are actively getting ready for global
competition and already beginning to meet some of
the challenges facing political, business and labour
leadership.
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The first dimension of challenge posed by trade
liberalization is the challenge of complex
negotiations. Another dimension of the
challenge posed by the twenty-first century is the
need for leadership transformation in every field
of endeavour.
One formidable aspect of the negotiation challenge in
getting ready for global competition is the density of
this negotiation schedule. Their scope and intensity,
within a tight time frame, and the obvious
implications for planning at the local, and regional
levels, dictate the need for close and effective
leadership within the political, technical corporate and
industrial directorate.
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These challenges anse most urgently from the
imminence of the target dates by which preferential
and protectionist-trading methods are to be further
dismantled, and liberalized trading regimes
significantly extended:
• 2005 - the establishment of the Free Trade Area
of the Americas
• 2008 - the ending of preferential arrangements
under the CP-EU Cotonou Agreement.
In getting ready for global competition, each of us,
every leader of politics, business and of labour, faces
two dimensions of challenge posed by these two
levels of change.
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Political, business and labour leadership, hard pressed
by day-to-day problems, as well as limited by quality
and quantity of professional and technical staff, with
comparatively meager resources, have to be engaged
in concurrent negotiation meetings at many different
levels - sometimes simultaneously.
In the Caribbean, meetings of committees and subcommittees
to deal with CSME, the FTAA, ACP-EU,
the Doha round of the WTO, etc. are now taking
place at dizzying pace.
The second aspect of the negotiation challenge
relates to the nature of the playing field and of the
game itself. Frankly, the field is not level; neither is
the game fair.
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I rely on the comment of the UNDP 1n its 2002
Human Development Report:
"Trade rules consistently work against products from
developing countries, such as agriculture and textiles,
and fail to restrain protectionist abuses in industrial
countries. On average, industrial country tariffs on
imports from developing countries are four times
those on imports from other industrial countries. And
industrial countries provide $1 billion a day in
domestic agricultural subsidies - more than six times
what they spend on official development assistance
for developing countries."
Another imbalance of great concern is, of course, the
continuing failure of major actors in the world's
trading system to observe the core labour standards,
which have received tri-partite endorsement within
the framework of the ILO.
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It is quite obvious that goods and services produced
by labour, where freedom to join trade unions and
bargain collectively is guaranteed by law, are at a
huge competitive disadvantage in a marketplace with
goods and services produced by labour that is not
free to join unions which bargain collectively.
Yet, on the other hand, it is equally obvious that
incorporating rules within the global trading regime,
compelling observation of core labour standards, on
pain of sanctions, could well be used as a subterfuge
for introducing discriminatory devices by the more
powerful against smaller and more vulnerable
economies.
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We have yet to find a way to deal more effectively
with this explosive issue. We in the Caribbean are
fully committed to preserving human rights at the
workplace, on principle, and since in fact such
preservation contributes to raising levels of labourmanagement
cooperation, productivity and efficiency.
I mention these matters - the density and complexity
of the negotiation processes, the imbalance in trade
rules and their outcomes - to illustrate one of the
huge responsibilities of leadership. Getting ready for
global competition means mastering the negotiation
challenge.
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I must emphasise that, especially in smaller and more
vulnerable economies and regions like the Caribbean,
this challenge cannot be adequately met if leadership
in government, business and labour insist on
marching to the beat of each individual drummer. The
closest collaboration - sharing of ideas, experiences,
expertise, resources and networks - among all three
sectors is absolutely critical in beginning to come to
grips with the negotiation challenge.
We must move as quickly as possible to forge social
partnerships and go further at the enterprise and
sectoral levels to create partnerships, which embrace
the entire region.
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In this regard, your experience of closer collaboration
amongst the social partners in PROMALCO over the
last few years, has much to teach. So too our
experience here in Jamaica, where the formation of
the Jamaica Trade Adjustment Team (JTAT) over the
last few years, incorporates representatives of the
government, private sector, trade unions and, more
broadly, civil society, in formulating a national
approach.
Regionally within CARICOM, we have established the
Regional Negotiating Machinery (RNM).
Regional Ministers are assigned to undertake specific
areas of negotiating responsibility, and support the
RNM in the negotiating process. Such processes must,
however, be intensified, as the target dates draw
closer.
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The challenge to leaders - be they political, business
or labour, is to effect the change in style and
substance that globalisation makes imperative. The
old hierarchies and approaches of political, business
and labour leadership formed in the protectionist era,
of relatively closed societies can no longer sustain
legitimacy.
Fifty years ago, and even up to the 70s and 80s,
political parties, business enterprises and trade unions
were in tune with the culture and characteristics of
the time when "leadership" and "followership" defined
relationships.
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The reality is that the world and the society in which
we all live have undergone profound changes in the
decade of the 90s. The main tools of this
transformation have been and remain:
• rapid, unplanned urbanisation;
• the spread of near universal education;
• extensive travel by Caribbean citizens and
visitors to and from the most developed
metropolitan centers in the world;
• the transistor radio, the television - particularly
cable, the cellular, the VCR, talk radio and, most
recently,
• the computer and the Internet.
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The situation has produced, particularly among the
young, a new Caribbean man and woman, by and
large unresponsive to old-style Caribbean leadership.
It has transformed the employee, the union member,
the citizen from being:
• relatively uninformed to informed;
• relatively unexposed, to exposed;
• relatively dependent to independent;
• relatively insecure to confident;
• relatively orderly to prone to disorder.
It is therefore abundantly clear that without
leadership transformation at the workplace, in our
communities, and in our national and regional
institutions, we shall never be able to rebuild nor
increase the stock of social capital - the network of
cooperation and collaboration across divisions of
class, race, colour gender, age, region and politics.
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I cannot stress too much that forging national and
regional unity across these divides is indispensable in
coping with global competition and ensuring that we
are not overwhelmed by its intensity.
Leadership must undergo a paradigm shift - away
from styles and structures reflected in metaphors
such as "bossman", whether this refers to industry or
union.
In politics, business and labour we have to become
captains and coaches of teams:
• honing and encouraging the diverse aptitudes
and initiatives of individual team members;
• constantly upgrading all -round training and skill
levels;
• most of all, motivating and inspiring members by
learning from them as well as guiding.
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In this regard, I must address the issue of the
responsibility of leaders to educate the society at
large on the new realities.
There are some truths, which have become selfevident
with the advent of globalisation:
• No enterprise, whether privately or publicly
owned, Can survive in today's world if the unit
costs of production are uncompetitive;
• In the case of a state-owned entity, wherever the
consumer is spared from paying the real cost, it
is simply falling to the account of the taxpayer
instead;
• A change of ownership, which does not result in
a cessation of employment, cannot entitle the
worker to receive his pension and still retain the
job;
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• Whether the product be goods or services, its
future is in peril, unless it is truly competitive.
Any attempt to hide behind protectionist barriers
may manage to prolong its comatose state but
will eventually fail.
All leaders must take responsibility for promoting an
understanding of yet another stark reality of the
global market economy in which investments are no
longer determined by national frontiers.
Investors, both local and foreign, have a choice. They
go where the profits are highest. They seek a friendly
social and industrial environment.
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Political, business and labour leadership must help to
create such an environment, one that is conducive to
attracting investment so as to expand job
opportunities and to increase the capacity for greater
productivity from the workforce.
This requires the establishment of a direct link
between productivity and incomes. The lesson must
be driven home that an increase in productivity is the
fundamental basis for achieving growth. It is our
collective responsibility to make it clear that if
incomes are to rise, then productivity levels must go
up. No one should give the impression that anyone
who suggests this is anti-worker.
Labour leaders must be cognizant that if they are to
secure greater benefits for workers, they must
bargain on the basis of greater productivity, and that
meaningful incentives must be based on performance.
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At the same time, employers should accept that
workers are entitled to share in the benefits of real
productivity. Related to the matter of productivity
bargaining, is the introduction of negotiation protocols
that would support a more efficient process for
industrial disputes resolution.
CONCLUSION
In getting ready for global competition, meeting the
negotiation and leadership challenges is not and shall
not be easy for our political, business and labour
leadership.
Our history shows that however difficult the
challenge, we face it with creativity and courage.
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Your own experience in the Programme for the
Promotion of Management-Labour Cooperation shows
that with effort an will, histories of adversarialism can
be replaced by partnership and collaboration. With
encouragement from your experience and example,
let us resolve to improve and strengthen our
readiness for global competition.
Allow me to once again commend your work and wish
you every success in your deliberations and that they
will further equip and inspire you to meet the
challenges that lie ahead.
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