GIVEN the labour challenges and other issues facing the world today, the Caribbean’s labour leaders must use social justice to promote socioeconomic development for the benefit of the people in the region.

This point was made by President Dr. Irfaan Ali, while delivering his address at the opening of the Twelfth Subregional ILO Meeting of Caribbean Labour Ministers, at the Guyana Marriot Hotel on Tuesday.

The three-day event is a collaboration between the International Labour Organisation (ILO), Decent Work Team and Office for the Caribbean and Guyana’s Ministry of Labour, and is being held under the theme, “Social justice- the foundation for sustainable Caribbean transformation.”

President Ali in his address said that social justice cannot be an event or target, but a culture.

“That is what we have allowed social justice to be, a set of measurable targets that we aim to achieve. Social justice must be a culture through which societies are built, through which nations are built, through which policies are built. It cannot be a set of targets,” President Ali said.

He explained that for this to work for the countries, it must be a culture that they all adhere to and adopt.

“Too many times as countries we are asked to manage for targets and manage for outcomes and manage for situations and manage for benchmarks and manage for statistics, but are we managing for people? Are we building systems that allow people to be the centre of the policy?” he said before emphasising that “it is time we wake up as a world…”

He questioned how the disparity that exists and the proportionate responsibility of what is required should be calculated.

“Would the system allow us to have that conversation or would we ensure that the system allows that conversation. We may be too small individually but collectively we have enough to question the system,” he said.

President Ali, in stating the three confronting crises of the world: energy security, food security and climate security, questioned where in those areas social justice exists.

He noted that with the first global challenge the world faced, social justice was erased.

“We must not forget that those who could not have afforded the vaccines are still waiting for the vaccines and those who could have afforded the vaccines were told you are not priority in the line,” the head of state explained.

He said that they cannot continue in a world where they know that the three crises would affect them the worst without having answers now.

President Ali related that social justice for workers is accessibility to financing to ensure future generations have access to education, healthcare, and equal opportunity.

He pointed out that it is not about creating the framework for existing workers alone.

“It is about how globally we are taking collective responsibility for the workforce now and in the future and what is happening,” he stated.

REGIONAL AGENDA
President Ali said that these conferences must not be bound only by externalities, but must be shaped by their own realities and they must pose the questions and advance the agenda in the region.

“In this region, we too have priorities. We too have an agenda. We too have citizens and realities and circumstances. It is time for us to use these forums to advance our cause as a people of this region,” he related.

President Ali added: “The ILO must not escape this symposium without providing answers or without assuring us in this region that our priorities will be on the agenda for answers to be provided.”

Additionally, he noted that they have to craft their minds around a labour policy that will allow them to fill the needs and gaps that the region has.

“As the world faces its own labour challenges, we in the Caribbean find ourselves in a position that we are investing for those who can pay higher. There is freedom of movement of labour. We cannot afford the salaries so is affordability a component of social justice?” he related.

President Ali noted that he sees special migration programmes and policies developed every day to target the highly skilled workers of the region and they cannot afford the type of salaries that will keep them.

Given that the region’s circumstances are different, the labour framework in the region should be different, according to President Ali.

“Unless we can build our programmes and policies around this frame, we will be doing a great injustice to policymaking,” he said.

GLOBAL TARGET
Further, President Ali stated that 53 per cent or four billion persons in the global population are not covered in a social protection programme.

“Studies have shown that 1 per cent of GDP investment of social protection policies can have a multiplier effect on GDP between 0.7 per cent and 1.9 per cent,” he said.

Acknowledging that this is a theoretical study, he called on the attendees to imagine if one per cent of Global GDP was deployed to help developing countries.

“If the ILO spends so much money on this study that shows the multiplier effects of one per cent if national investment on GDP, you have proven it. What are you going to do to ensure the globe commits to one per cent to developing countries of GDP? One per cent of the developed world’s GDP, imagine the multiplier effect,” he said.

Additionally, he said that just utilising the outcome of the ILO’s study to push for a target, that should be a global target, it was found that poverty was reduced between four per cent and 1.3 per cent with an increase of one per cent GDP in social protection investment.

“So if it is an investment of one per cent of GDP, you can reduce poverty, by four and 13 per cent,” he said.

In continuing, he said that in the interest of social justice, he would like to see from the symposium, a strong statement that pushes global commitment on the one per cent.

Moreover, President Ali shared more statistics.

He said that in the Caribbean, when the population covered by at least one social protection benefit in 2020 is examined in most of the region’s countries, they are below the 60 per cent mark.

“We are below the 60 per cent mark, because when COVID hit us, we had to take money that was programmed for education, health [and] social protection, to ensure people stayed alive and that quantum of resources, we cannot catch up for the next five or 10 years because our debt to GDP ratio will not allow us,” he said before emphasising that this is the reality of the world we live in.

POSITIVE OUTOMES
Meanwhile, Minister of Labour, Joseph Hamilton said that he is looking forward to positive outcomes and expects to have exchange programmes with other ministries.

He said that this forum is seen as the beginning of a process of collaboration and coordination.

Additionally, Dennis Zulu, Director at the ILO DWT and Office for the Caribbean Office said that the meeting is designed to provide them with a platform to prioritise and discuss social justice as a foundation for sustainable Caribbean transformation.

“We can all agree that the extraordinary challenges faced by our…region and planet have been compiled into overlapping crisis. The impacts of COVID-19, climate change [and] global conflicts have worsened preexisting weaknesses such as unemployment levels poverty and inequalities,” he said.

Zulu noted that they now have no other choice but to rethink how they approach the socioeconomic development challenges.

Minister of Labour, Social Security and Third Sector, Barbados, Colin Jordan, said that the theme chosen for the meeting is both appropriate and timely as there will be much to unpack during the sessions of the meeting.

“Social justice is, and must remain the foundation for all we do in nation and region building and in all we do for workers who are a critical part of the construction of nations and region that we want,” he said.

Minister Jordon added that Barbados concurs with the Director General of ILO, Gilbert Houngbo, when he spoke on World Day for Social Justice and said: “What the world needs now is a strong and sustained dose of social justice which is key to fair peaceful societies.”

Jordan said in that vein, they support strongly, the creation of a global coalition for social justice and Barbados Prime Minister, Mia Motley, is set to be in Geneva next month to add to her voice and support to the call and to the necessary institution that needs to be created.

Among those participating in the meeting are Ministers of Labour and senior officials from 13 ILO member states and nine non-metropolitan territories in the English and Dutch-speaking Caribbean. Representatives from regional workers’ organisations and employers’ organisations will also be in attendance.