ONLY A FOOL BREAKS HIS OWN HEART

MIGHTY Sparrow’s timeless ballad Only A Fool Breaks His Own Heart is appropriate for the latest happening in the labour sector.

Trade unionists’ breakup with the ruling PNM is a major development and the end of a shocking era in Trinidad and Tobago’s economic and social history.

Ancel Roget, whose Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union (OWTU) is considered the most powerful labour body in the land, announced that the working class was pitching its electoral support to the UNC.

That is full circle for labour, which was a crucial partner in a coalition that secured 29 seats in the 2010 general election.

Most governments have tension with labour, but the adversarial stance against the Kamla Persad-Bissessar Government led to trade unions embracing Dr. Keith Rowley’s PNM in 2015.

The sight of Roget, David Abdulah and labour’s top brass sharing Rowley’s company was scandalous for those who recalled the PNM’s long and vicious anti-working class history.

The PNM has never treated workers as a crucial national stakeholder.

A PNM administration tear-gassed, manhandled and arrested George Weekes, a predecessor OWTU leader, for marching against the oppression of workers in 1975.

Since Weekes was one of the most prominent labour leaders of the era, the attack was a pointer to the PNM’s hostility toward workers.

The administration of Dr. Eric Williams harassed and charged trade unionists and introduced anti-worker legislation, including the repressive Industrial Stabilisation Act and its successor Industrial Relations Act.

Abdulah was among those beaten and arrested by police around Queen’s Park Oval for protesting apartheid and the imprisonment of hero Nelson Mandela.

A successor PNM regime summarily shut down the sugar cane industry, displacing thousands of struggling workers.

The PNM never advocated a pro-labour agenda, and divided the movement to the point of placing grovelling trade unionists as Government senators.

Even with that dark history, the PNM was able to embrace Roget et al, proving that only a fool breaks his own heart.

A leopard does not change its spots, and the Rowley Administration has inflicted hardship upon the working masses.

There has been a virtual wage freeze while the cost of living has skyrocketed and the divide between rich and poor has widened.

The lights remain out at the Petrotrin plant, there have been layoffs in the public sector, and farming has been allowed to decline while big-shot PNM backers are importing more food.

Bank charges are hurting small businesses and the common man has to endure the crime epidemic, including home invasions.

Basdeo Panday famously said that workers were destined to remain drawers of water and hewers of wood.  

The Government’s callous response to the deaths of maintenance divers employed at the Pointe-a-Pierre harbour illustrates its indifference to the working class.

Families of the four deceased have campaigned for two years for justice and compensation.

Paria Fuel Trading Company’s directors are still in place despite a recommendation from a commission of enquiry for criminal charges of corporate manslaughter.

Generally, workers’ quality of life has fallen over the past nine years, while Rowley flippantly shows he is a country club Prime Minister with little time for the suffering of the masses.

After almost a decade of such adversity, the labour sector has awoken to the appalling reality of the PNM sidestepping workers and strengthening the elites.

Only a fool…