The Labour Movement, Vaccine Mandate and Unity

The deadly COVID-19 pandemic and the mixed reaction of governments around the world and dissenting sections of their population, particularly in the ranks of organized labour, has caused many conflicts in large as well as much smaller countries like ours. In some countries, including ours, the effects are still being experienced.

There have been industrial disputes, demonstrations, and even physical confrontations, while some cases have reached the courts in their respective countries.

Many of the disputes have arisen out of claims by workers and their organisations of objection to the World Heath Organisation’s adoption of a vaccine. Some have objected on the grounds of the human right of workers to determine what is put into their bodies. The dispute boiled down fundamentally to a clash over what should take priority in a case of health emergency as was declared here, the individual freedom of conscience, or the broader issue of the health and safety of the population for which the government has responsibility. In several countries, this dispute became intertwined with two strands of opposition, that relating to objections to the vaccine itself, and an unrelated but in many cases opportunist political opposition to the government itself. Sadly, some of that occurred here, blurring the issue.

At the heart of the dispute locally are workers in the public sector and the unions which represent them.

Worse the vaccine dispute, rather than engendering a mature discussion among trade union leaders, ended up further fracturing the delicate relationship between the leadership of some trade unions and broad sections of their membership, as well as between the trade unions themselves. There emerged clear differences in approach to the so-called vaccine mandate, which, sad to say, were not dealt with maturely at the leadership level.

The vaccine dispute inevitably ended up in the court- once, twice, and now a threatened third time, right up to the foreign Privy Council, which is still, paradoxically, our final Court of Appeal. There is no doubt that in small countries like ours, genuine industrial disputes often get infected by political interests. With elections right on our doorsteps there is grave danger in this possibility, in surrendering the interests of workers to narrow political ones.

It took years of patient dialogue, in an atmosphere where governments were invariably hostile to the labour movement, to achieve even the fragile unity which was marked by the emergence of the National Labour Congress. Is it in the interests of workers to divide even this limited form of unity, or do the leaders have a responsibility to demonstrate their maturity, and difficult as it is, seek to repair the damage and reunite the labour movement? Which is better for workers? Two opposing strands of a labour movement,or a single body with a common focus, which places the broader interests of workers above personal ambitions, choices and political preferences?