SO National Labour Day comes around again this coming Monday. We have certainly come a long way from the days when the conditions that workers laboured under were similar to that of slaves. The problem today is that workers still do not own the business in which they work. It is as if worker participation has been thrown in the garbage heap. And this is sad!

National Labour Day in Jamaica came about when then Premier Norman Washington Manley emphasised the dignity of labour and simultaneously abolished the Empire Day holiday. He did not think it appropriate that a nation about to become politically independent should gather students to sing “Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves, the Britons shall never again be slaves.”

So the original plan was to have Labour Day on May 24 to replace the Empire Day holiday. It was David Clement Tavares, the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Member of the House of Representatives for St Andrew South Western, who suggested May 23 rather than May 24. May 23 was the day when the trade union movement in Jamaica was started by Sir Alexander Bustamante. Norman Manley agreed. Jamaica first celebrated National Labour Day in 1961.

For the first 11 years of National Labour Day, the trade unions marched on Labour Day. And, since the major trade unions in Jamaica are affiliated to political parties, they were really political meetings disguised as trade union workers’ meetings. It so much so that the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union members sang: “We will follow Bustamante till we die.”

The Trades Union Congress and the National Workers’ Union members sang:

“Workers of Jamaica, lift your voices strong today,

O workers of Jamaica, let united voices say,

the time has come when we must decide to shout our rightful claims far and wide,

O workers of Jamaica, unite, unite, and fight.

“Workers of Jamaica join this fight for liberty,

O workers of Jamaica, join this great fraternity,

No prison cell can ever defeat the workers who shall never retreat,

O workers of Jamaica, unite, unite ,and fight.”

In 1972, Michael Manley, as prime minister, asked Jamaicans to observe Labour Day by doing some practical work rather than depending on the trade unions to have their marches and meetings. This caught on so well so that when the People’s National Party lost power to the JLP in 1980, and Edward Seaga became prime minister and downplayed the Labour Day projects, Jamaicans continued to do practical work on Labour Day.

Today, some have commercialised the Labour Day workday concept, with the hardware and paint companies advertising their wares for the Labour Day projects. No problem, except that the original concept can be lost, which has happened with the commercialisation of Christmas and Easter.

Trade unions were very important in 1938, and perhaps for the next 30 years or so after that. Some trade unionists seem to have lost their sincere concern for ordinary workers and operate the trade unions merely as businesses. They seem to fear that if they move with the times, as in other parts of the world, the trade unions will become obsolete. So, trade unionists have not reinvented themselves as the body that will organise co-operatives, which came about in Jamaica in the same bout of nationalism in the 1938 to 1944 period. Neither have they organised worker-share ownership, which was stressed by the pope, Saint John XXIII, in his 1961 encyclical Pacem en Terras (‘Peace on Earth’). Trade unions justify their existence by simply calling strikes and by collecting dues for doing so. True, there has been progress, but workers should have been far more advanced today. Why are domestic helpers still oppressed and without bargaining power?

National Labour Day 2015 comes against the background of the fires at Riverton dump earlier this year, and in the recent fires in the Blue Mountains that started in Mavis Bank, the birthplace of the late Monsignor Gladstone Wilson (1906-74), who in his lifetime was the seventh most learned man in the world.

I recall being on a camp in 1974 sponsored by the Search Movement (now inactive in Jamaica). Search started off as a church organisation of the Roman Catholic Church for youth in and out of church, regardless of denomination, but in the end was more about civic-mindedness. That year we had a terrible drought, the Search Movement youth camp was held at St Peter’s in the Blue Mountains. There was a massive bush fire nd we, campers, went up the hill to offer our services. We were shocked that residents on one side of the hill would not help residents on the other.

One of the searchers was from the area. He explained that the ‘non-cooperation’ among residents was caused by the adherents of the three major denominations in the area (none of them Roman Catholic) because they were not speaking to each other. We did our best in felling tree branches, but we were overwhelmed as the breeze blew the fire over to the other side, even then they did not help out, their own safety notwithstanding.

Are the Blue Mountains church divisions still the same 41 years later? Was that the reason the fire got out of hand? The young searcher from the area was actually a civil servant who was on leave from work. He said he would never become a Roman Catholic, but he eventually did. His name is Burchell Alexander McPherson, the current Roman Catholic Bishop of Montego Bay.

The disunity that I witnessed in the Blue Mountains in 1974 in the face of adversity is a national problem. It has impeded the progress in the development of co-operatives and the development of ideas as to how to progress and how to prevent disasters. For example, a JDF helicopter was used to help out with managing the fire in Mavis Bank. Why can’t the JDF helicopter wet Riverton, Jack’s Hill and the Blue Mountains every day; rain or shine, drought or flood, fire or no fire? The residents in these areas should have collectively purchased their own helicopter for the purpose.

ekrubm765@yahoo.com