My apology for keeping waiting the man who now walks in the giant shoes of National Hero Sir Alexander Bustamante and former prime minister, Hugh Lawson Shearer, and the big shoes of Pearnel Charles, Rudyard Spencer and Dwight Nelson, these last three being currently ministers of government.

On May 13, Kavan Gayle, president of the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union (BITU) wrote, through a letter to The Gleaner, to say that he would appreciate if I would clarify certain comments I had made about the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP)/government-affiliated BITU in my April 19 column "Shred the Budget".

As a rule, I seek to respond, however briefly, to all the personal correspondence I receive from the column. Public responses are another matter. I have to consider carefully whether devoting another column to a response is worth it, or if I should simply move on to another interesting matter rushing upon us in public discourse, and about which I have something to say. So, for instance, I decided not to follow up the self-designated 'Professor of slackness' in our public exchanges on dancehall and fertility cults.

Gayle's careful treatment of my comments, his request for a response, and the timely occasion of Labour Day, together prompted a decision for a response.

Having written in the column that "only the silence of the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union (BITU) in the whole episode [the public sector wage freeze dispute between trade unions and the Government] has been more conspicuous than the rapid retreat of the confederation," President Gayle wanted to know what grouse I had with his union.

Gayle rightly concluded that I am on to more than mere criticism of the silence of the BITU. Leaders of other member unions of the JCTU - like Lambert Brown of the UAWU, Danny Roberts of the NWU and Wayne Jones of the JCSA - did not seem equally constrained to let the confederation speak. Not to mention leaders of the 'independent' teachers', nurses' and police unions.

Tribal wars

I do have a very big grouse, not only with the silence of the BITU (and with the president's explanation), but with the union itself, and with the political party-affiliated unions and, in general, with elements of the conduct of trade unions in this country since the 1930s. And this is not to deny the usefulness of trade unions nor their contributions.

Two of the biggest disasters to have overtaken Jamaica since Universal Adult Suffrage with self-government in 1944 are the political tribal wars and the linkage of the trade-union movement and the political parties, both of which are, in fact, connected. Most Jamaicans, fed what the great 20th-century Cambridge historian Herbert Butterfield called "official history" or fed no history at all, will not know that organised, inter-institutional violence in Jamaica did not begin between the political parties, but between the trade unions which fought pitched street battles, particularly on 'Labour Days' when they held competing street parades.

It was for this and other reasons of wasteful competition and conflict that Prime Minister Michael Manley, who had earlier led the National Workers' Union (NWU), converted Labour Day, beginning in 1972, into a day for peaceful community projects in which all Jamaicans could participate. Labour Day this year is marred by charges of political tribalism. It is a fact of history that Alexander Bustamante, not averse to strong-arm tactics in the labour movement, mobilised BITU workers out of the underbelly of Kingston, particularly West Kingston, to provide political muscle for his Jamaica Labour Party [note the name]. The PNP did the same with NWU member workers.

By the time of the Hearne Commission of Enquiry set up by the colonial governor in election year 1949, violence had become an entrenched feature of political competition in Jamaica.

Ananda Sives of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies writes in Anthony Harriott's [Editor] Understanding Crime in Jamaica: "By 1949, both political parties were engaged in violence to achieve political goals: the JLP to keep the PNP off the streets of Kingston, and the PNP to force their way back, to campaign for their party and their union movement." Obika Gray, US-based Jamaican professor of political science, details the "Fateful Alliance" and its results in chapter two of his book Demeaned but Empowered: The Social Power of the Urban Poor in Jamaica.

Not much of this appears in the 'official history' textbooks, or even has been allowed to survive in oral history. The party/union leaders are now thoroughly sanitised National heroes who can only be criticised at one's peril. So, the contributions of the labour movement are overwhelmingly assessed - officially by court historians - as heroic resistance against oppression.

Negative contribution

The largest currency note in the United States is the $100 bill. In the United Kingdom it is the £100 note. The fact that we now need a Shearer [$5,000], launched with such pride and fanfare on H.L's. birthday, and earlier, a Manley [$1,000], cannot be divorced from the negative contribution that the trade union-political party 'conspiracy' has made in stifling the transformation of the Jamaican economy. Both Hugh Shearer and Michael Manley were trade-union leaders-turned-politicians and prime ministers. The Parliament in both Upper and Lower Houses is stacked with trade unionists by special party arrangement. Uneconomical employ-ment has been preserved for political benefit in areas ranging from sugar to the public service.

In 1984, Harvard economists Richard B. Freeman and James L. Medoff published a book What Do Unions Do? The book analysed the wage and non-wage effects of trade unions. Their conclusion was that, on balance, unionisation appears to improve rather than to harm the social and economic system. But they did acknowledge the extensive negative effects of unions.

In the case of Jamaica, the benefits, in my view, have been considerably reduced by the strong union-party-government tie. One powerful example, which a few 'wicked, anti-worker' people are now finding the courage to discuss, is the transfer of social-welfare provisions from the Government itself to employers by the Redundancy Act, which has unfairly hampered business re-structuring and the reallocation of capital, holding down the economy.

Bruce Golding appears to be a non-union prime minister with the courage, will, independence and insight to face the unions in a larger national interest, as Margaret Thatcher successfully did in Britain.

Martin Henry is communications consultant. Feedback may be sent to columns@gleanerjm.com.