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Employment Stories in the English Speaking Caribbean

Explore the characteristics, challenges, and strategies for employment in the English-speaking Caribbean countries. Learn about labor market features, economic strategies, industrial sectors, and government interventions.

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Employment Stories in the English Speaking Caribbean

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  1. Employment Stories in the English Speaking Caribbean Ralph Henry Kairi Consultants Ltd October 21, 2004

  2. Characteristics of Caribbean Economies • Smallness and small market size • Lack of diversification • Imports and Exports high, relative to GDP – highly open economies • Reliance on limited range of products and services • Lack of competitiveness and reliance on preferences • Technological dependence • Vulnerable to trade shocks

  3. Caribbean Development and Employment Creation • Lewis’s Dilemma • Solution Set • Capital and Entrepreneurship from abroad • Markets in metro-pole and brought by foreign capital itself • Low wage and the virtuous circle

  4. Labour Market Features • Endemic unemployment • Labour Market does not clear • Trade Unions and stickiness of wages • Institutional structures and labour markets • Labour and Politics • Labour market segmentation • Reservation wages – mineral export sector, workers can ‘afford’ unemployment • Metropolitan lifestyle and links to Metropole determining wage goods

  5. Economic Strategy • ISI • Agricultural Diversification • Nationalisation and Commanding Heights • Economic Integration • Labour intensive technology • Export promotion – EPZs, and international division of labour, segmentation – garments and assembly operations • Tourism led growth • State sector employment and SEP

  6. Stabilisation and Structural Adjustment Experience • Attempt at Flexibilisation • Retrenchment and Reduction of State Employment • Getting prices right • Informalisation of work • Technological Change

  7. Industrial Strategy and Existing Tradables • Jamaica – bauxite/alumina, bananas, sugar, light manufacturing, data entry, tourism, underground economy and informal sector, music • St. Lucia – bananas, light manufacturing, data entry, tourism, • Barbados – sugar, light manufacturing, information processing, tourism, other services • Trinidad and Tobago – oil and gas, manufacturing and regional markets, financial services, sugar, music

  8. Intervening Institutions • Conflict management and labour markets • Industrial Court in Trinidad and Tobago • Tripartite Accord in Barbados • Open conflict – political taint • People response – Transnational household – remittances, migration (intra and extra-regional, eg. nursing for migration) music and culture, informal sector, underground economy

  9. Role and Response of Government • The Bigger State – subject to revenue • SMEs • SEPs: function of government revenues – Unemployment Relief Programme (URP), CEPEP and OJT for youth, and MuST for 18-50, in Trinidad and Tobago – sustainable with high revenues from gas and oil • Human Resource Development with wide open doors to post-secondary education and training in Barbados

  10. Lessons or Moral of Story • Employment generation by diversifying and strengthening tradable sector - HRD implications therefrom • Difficult to avoid mechanisms to share work in the short term, including using SEPs • Managing remittances and savings, including ‘in-shoring’ savings from abroad, and redraining brains, and market penetration by migrants abroad eg music and culture • Empowerment through human resource development rather than certification of labour

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