We are not with Mr Nelson, however, on his implied way for forward. As he pointed out in his intervention last week to the parliamentary committee reviewing the matter, legislators, trade unions and employers have been jawboning the issue for a dozen years. That is a long time - half a generation.
staggering economic growth
During those 12 years, China, India, Brazil and several other middle-income developing countries have enjoyed staggering economic growth and have gone a long way in dragging themselves out of poverty. In some cases, these countries, among them Barbados, have placed themselves on the cusp of developed-country status.
Jamaica, in the meantime, has meandered, its growth rate over the period at an anaemic one per cent or thereabouts. Productivity remains low, the economy is inefficient and Jamaica is still low on the league table of global productivity.
When the dialogue on more flexible work arrangements began in 1997, no policymaker, or merely relatively informed person was under any illusion that it represented a complete fix to Jamaica's efficiency and productivity issues. However, breaking out of the strictures of a five-day workweek (Monday to Friday) would be part of a broader reform of the labour market that would help to enhance competitiveness.
The 40-hour workweek, for instance, could be stretched over the entire seven days of the calendar week and workers and employers would agree on how job times would be structured. There would be no need, therefore, for premium payment for work done on Saturdays or Sundays and firms, in conjunction with their staff, would be better able to adjust work hours to limit the need for overtime.
Such flexibility, would on the face of it, be beneficial to firms and the broader economy by reducing what, essentially, is wage-cost steroids in their accounts. Jamaica would be more attractive to investors. This, however, is no one-way street. There is a liberating factor for workers if they, in conjunction with employers, can adjust work hours to better suit their lifestyles. Moreover, greater labour-market efficiency and economic productivity would mean GDP growth and ultimately more jobs. Indeed, some arrangements have worked well in sections of the economy where they are an inevitable part of the work process or to others into which they have crept over time by changing social circumstances.
willing to pander
Unfortunately, the fundamentalist zealots have sought to hijack the debate and have been able to intimidate governments into inaction. Mr Nelson is willing to pander to, if not acquiesce with them, hoping, we suppose, that cultural shifts, over time, will render their opposition irrelevant.
That, however, is to lose sight of the existing global circumstance and the time Jamaica has already lost, which we can count in uncreated jobs. It is time, we declare, for the Government to legislate flexi-time. Religion, we are sure, will adjust to the new marketplace.
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