Some advice for May Day

May 01, 2002
By Bukka Rennie

Today is May Day. The International Day of Labour solidarity. To many in Trinidad and Tobago, May 1 will be of no significance. But that will not be the case for hundreds of millions of workers throughout Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America.

Today they will walk off the production lines, as they have been known to do since May 1 was adopted as International Workers' Day at a workers' congress in Paris, France, in 1889 in commemoration of the specific struggle for the eight-hour day.

All over the world they will today join together to march the streets of cities and towns in international solidarity with each other, to review their struggles for social progress and development, and rededicate themselves to the task of building democratic societies from the bottom up.

For those of us who are not cognizant of the historic facts, the eight-hour day/40-hour work week may appear to be of little significance.

But that one signal victory changed the course of the entire world, freed the multitudes from the bondage of common drudgery and allowed them the "time" to pursue other areas of salient human development.

A modern world could not have been built without the further accumulation of "social capital" and infrastructure and the higher levels of training and skills development that all came as a direct result of the "time" made readily available to all and sundry after the establishment of the eight-hour day.

One should never forget to pay homage today, particularly in this globalised world, to the martyrs of the eight-hour day struggle.

T&T was one country that from "early o'clock", so to speak, sought to minimise the power of the international Labour Day exercise and to compromise its integrity.

Adrian Cola Rienzi and his cohorts of professional and middle-class elements, who had taken over leadership of the militant trade union movement while Uriah Butler was incarcerated, were the first ones who, on pretext that they were promoting Butler's cause and generating nationalist, patriotic fervour, tabled the motion in 1939 that June 19 be proclaimed Butler's Day and be declared a public holiday, a local substitute for May Day.

That motion was unsuccessful as many of the progressive elements of the day, including even the conservative Cipriani who had his own axe to grind, fought against this attempt to compromise the international spirit of May Day solidarity.

Eventually the very idea of a local Labour Day on June 19 was instituted in 1972, some 33 years after. May Day from then on became regulated to in-house celebrations by a few progressive trade unionists.

There should be no surprise today, May Day 2002, that the trade union movement of T&T is in complete disarray.

The germ of divisiveness was planted many years ago way back in 1939, and unity of the movement has only come in fleetingly short spurts since then.

Today, May Day 2002, the movement, split down the centre, is at its lowest and weakest ebb ever.

Can you imagine the most recent debacle? The OWTU convenes a COSSABO (Conference of Shop Stewards and Branch Officers) to discuss the present state of the sugar industry and is lambasted by elements of the Sugar Workers Union and pip-squeak politicians in the sugar belt for "interfering and meddling in sugar workers affairs." Imagine that!

The sugar industry is where the Caribbean proletarian civilisation began. We all worked cane for hundreds of years.

The structures of "plantation political-economy", with its attendant evils arising out of the off-shore/in-shore dichotomy to which we are all still subjugated, had its genesis in the monoculture of sugar.

The whole country, the entire populace, should be discussing and debating this in an attempt to work our way out of the morass and design new beginnings.

Since when your business is not my business! Where is the demand for solidarity on this here May Day?

And there is more.

The medical arm of the PSA suddenly desires to throw away the strength and tremendous value derived from a combine of all public servants, that have in the past brought governments to their knees, suggesting to walk their own narrow, less effective, much diminished road. Is that the way of the wise?

On this May Day of 2002, when we should be talking about the machinations of the WTO (World Trade Organisation) and the G-8 countries and the coming of the FTAA (Free Trade Agreement of the Americas), etc, etc, and the kind of international workers' solidarity across continents that will be deemed necessary to re-fashion world affairs, we are here squabbling over petty turf.

We are yet a young country, but there is history enough to tell us that once the working masses are not united in common vision, we will be forever be torn apart by the demands of office, and racial and ethnic considerations and every other damn fool thing that any demi-god may dream up from the nether-world of sublime fantasies.