Honourable Ministers of Labour, ILO officials, Distinguished Worker and Employer Representatives, Ladies and Gentlemen. I am deeply honoured to have been invited to present as part of this afternoon's panel the institutional Framework in CARICOM for promoting Decent Work in Caribbean: a national perspective." Firstly, I wish to present my government's best wishes and highest regards for a truly engaging and productive conference.

I wish to also fully endorse the presentations which have gone before which have sought to elucidate this subject matter and to shed further insights into the concept and ideal of decent work.

Someone once said that "decent work is a journey, not a destination"; for as various elements of decent work appear to be achieved, others will emerge, creating the need for the journey to be perpetuated.

The emphasis toward the achievement of decent work must be driven by governments, since it is the government which has the responsibility and authority to monitor and police the factors that constitute decent work and the ability to bring sanctions against employers who violate the principle.

I sincerely believe that governments in the region must of necessity give utmost importance to placing people at the core of politics and economics. As Caribbean governments when we design our labour policies, we must take into account our societies' social, political, cultural, and environmental factors. If we fail to do this, we fail to take into account the true significance of development which touches the lives of our people.

It therefore means that government must take the lead in the critical element of production to ensure that it is not performing from a position of hypocrisy in a "do as I say, not as I do" mode but rather from a position where it is leading by example.

For small developing countries, like those in the Caribbean, the competitiveness of goods and services in international markets is critical to economic growth. Over the last decade employment in the Caribbean has shifted away from traditional sectors such as agriculture and manufacturing towards the service sector, especially tourism and financial services industries. However average education levels are low, thereby constraining growth through low productivity.

The World Bank reports that other aspects that restrict potential growth include relatively high wages in the Caribbean compared to Latin America and developing countries elsewhere. The rise in real wages during the 1990s in several countries hurt competitiveness and institutional features such as minimum wage legislation, collective bargaining and the influence of unions also act to raise wage and non-wage costs. Wages are fairly high in the Caribbean compared to other developing countries although in some tradable sectors this partly reflects higher labour productivity.

With this in mind it is absolutely necessary for a legal framework to be in place throughout the CARICOM member states in an effort to ensure there is a level playing field to begin with. This means that all member states must have satisfied the relevant ILO Conventions and have them as part of the local law to begin with.

Secondly there must be an effective Labour administration system in each country in sufficient quantity and high enough quality personnel to effectively ensure that the process can be sustained across the region. This is critical to ascertain that as workers move from one country to another in search of employment there would not be an imbalance of standards from one country to the other. In other words there must be a legal and political framework which must drive the process forward.

With these in place there must then be the political will and the unwavering commitment of both the policy directorate and the policy administrators to see the process through if results are to be realized. In doing this we must all be reminded of the Declaration of Mexico adopted on September 27, 2005 on "People and their Work at the Heart of Globalization" where Ministers of governments pledged to:

a. promote the full and effective exercise of workers' rights and the application of core labour standards. b. Strengthen the application of national labour laws and promote their effective and efficient enforcement. c. Implement labour commitments expressed by Heads of Governments in the past; and d. Fight poverty and eradicate extreme poverty through the promotion and creation of dignified employment.

These are just a few of the critical issues leading to Decent work which Ministers of Labour and their representatives recognized as prerequisites which should form part of the institutional framework of every CARICOM member for the promotion of decent work in the region.

In addition to this, the capacity for analysis must be developed in an effort to determine whether member states are meeting the stated and necessary objectives; and to assess the required needs to assist those that are demonstrating inadequacy.

The idea must be sold to all players that the investment made in promoting and ensuring decent work is an investment in the preservation of the human resource and by extension an investment in the long term success of the enterprise as well as increased profitability through greater productivity.

This suggests that there needs to be a culture shift on the part of the employer to embrace the principles of Management-Labour cooperation as promoted by PROMALCO. It must be institutionalized that in spite of the creation and financial investment of getting the business started; the ideas of the employer must contend with those of the employee to ensure that the enterprise operates at its fullest potential; so that employees feel a sense of ownership of the business and would go the extra mile to uphold the principles which they were allowed to establish.

No longer must we hear employers say "it is my money in this so I will do as I please." That era is gone and so we must embrace this new culture of inclusion and the participatory approach. If employers wish to change the work culture of employees, then they too must first change the old "boss" culture".

State Intervention- Youth and Special Needs Another element of the institutional framework is to ensure that our young people develop skills that can take them through life. (The constituency of St. George which I have the pleasure of representing is a constituency made up of a high percentage of young people…it is largely suburban and empowerment is a quintessential part of their priority needs.) It is therefore not sufficient for our students to simply pass a few subjects, but these subjects must be complemented with meaningful and practical skills which will make them more useful around their communities and certainly more marketable in the world of work.

TVET and NTA must be a part of the agenda of every government which is serious about the sustainable development of the human resource. The realization must ever be evident that the guys on the block, the school drop outs, the physically and mentally challenged and other disadvantaged groups are people too who have to be catered for. Strategies must therefore be devised to institutionalize the special care needed to be given such groups to develop and utilize their talents, to add value to their lives as they contribute to nation building. I am certain there is no need for me to highlight the social repercussions to a nation and by extension the region should these groups be ignored and remain disenfranchised.

All Labour Ministers in this room or elsewhere can attest to the fact that creating job opportunities is perhaps the greatest challenge facing governments in the Caribbean over the past four decades. There have been various attempts to generate employment for example through policies such as infrastructure development and public works; agricultural diversification; import substitution industrialization; nationalization and economic integration and export promotion; especially in tourism and financial services. All of these however have not significantly relieved the very high rates of unemployment in the region.

With the formal private sector unable to absorb fully the fall out from public sector lay-offs, many displaced workers have been seeking alternatives in informal employment. According to data from the Caribbean Development Bank there has been an increase in informal employment in most countries.

The informal labour market tends to be a source of income during economic downturns, as displaced workers engage in various low value-added service activities- we see them all over the Caribbean and Latin America- street vending, car washing, petty trading, small scale agriculture etc. ( I was in Chile last week, and saw a new one: street performers, clowns, stilt walkers and jugglers performing at major highways and road intersections for money) and incidentally many of these are also child labourers which contravenes ILO Convention No.138.

A large informal sector reflects a flexible response to excessive labour regulation and the costs associated thereto, but it also provides employment opportunities to low skilled workers who are otherwise unable to find jobs, thus raising aggregate employment.

In Antigua and Barbuda, as in much of the Caribbean region, the role of the state is interventionist in many respects, particularly as a source of direct employment creation both for essential service provision as well as through public works and other quasi-social assistance. Public sector employment is particularly high as a percentage of the labour force in the small island economies which cannot benefit from economies of scale.

In my country, public sector employment accounts for 32% of the labour force, the highest in the region. In the rest of the Caribbean, public sector employment has always been high as governments seek to use public sector jobs as a means of maintaining or building political support. It must be noted that the proactive and interventionist role of the state, while supporting marginal workers who might otherwise be unemployed- has important costs by distorting prices and other market signals and increasing the transaction costs of some economic activities.

It begs the question however whether these 'jobs' constitute decent work in the strictest sense of the term as so many of them are sinecures. However we politicians pat ourselves on the back that people are employed, and earning a salary. In many instances it is just that: taking up space and collecting a salary.

To further facilitate the goal of decent work for all; governments must play greater attention to the skills set they are targeting that they are not just creating jobs for the moment, but are focusing on employment that can be sustained. This is critical since job creation is an ongoing process which is necessary on almost a daily basis.

Despite a general improvement in educational attainment in recent years, 65-80 percent of jobs in the Caribbean are in mid and low level occupations. The rhetorical question is: is this decent work as defined by the ILO? The concentration of jobs in the lower end of the skills spectrum raises serious and fundamental concerns about the quality of employment. Employment does not guarantee an escape from poverty, as persons engaged in low wage jobs may still be poor or vulnerable to shocks that could lead them back into poverty. According to the World Bank "the phenomenon of the working poor namely those whose labour income is inadequate to meet basic consumption needs- is evident in the region."

I am happy to report that my Ministry just last week set up a National Minimum Wage Review Committee to seek to upgrade the minimum wage in six sectors of the labour force: agriculture, hotel and restaurant, domestic and housekeeping trades, constructions trades, shop and store clerks and the security trades. This is part of our efforts to cushion and shore up the economic power, if you may, of the less fortunate, the poor and the vulnerable in our society.

The Special Plight of Women

I wish to speak briefly to the special plight of women. The large majority of our labour markets is comprised of women. In some of our countries, women outnumber men in our populations. I happen to hold within my portfolio not only Labour and Civil Service affairs but also Gender Affairs and Empowerment, so I speak with a great amount of passion on this score. In our region female unemployment rates are 1.4 times higher than that of men. It is a fact that women still dominate traditional occupations such as clerical, service and sales workers, despite rising educational attainment.

Analysis of both census data and data emanating from the UWI Gender and Development Unit indicate that the regional labour force still remains highly sex stratified and females are still concentrated in marginalized low paid jobs.

Women have had to struggle for equity in the labour force and we still have a long way to go as a region in redressing the imbalances in gender parity, democracy and human rights. According to a leading UWI academic, Joycelyn Massiah the ability of women in the Caribbean to participate in the labour force at all, is circumscribed by the extent to which the legal system protects their rights within and outside of the labour force and the extent to which the state provides assistance to enable them to perform their various societal roles.

All of the constitutions of the Caribbean bar none, have accorded their citizens equality; while more than half have specifically guaranteed constitutional protection against discrimination on the grounds of sex. Under the impetus of the UN Decade for Women, most of the Caribbean region was prompted to undertake measures to improve the legal status of women by becoming signatories to the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) as well as the Optional Protocol.

Most countries have ratified the convention but not the Optional Protocol. I am very honoured to say that Antigua and Barbuda ratified the Protocol in Parliament four months ago. Given this, most CARICOM members states have agreed to take steps to ensure that their legal systems adopt the standards set by the Convention to achieve equal justice for all and equal rights for women.

Despite all of this, sex stereotyping is still prevalent. Women predominate in traditionally female jobs such as nursing, teaching, secretarial, clerical, dressmaking and domestic servants. Regional social scientists contend that while the nature of female employment may have changed over the last century, as economic production has shifted from the sugar cane fields to the cities, the quality of work available to most women is still characterized by excessive drudgery. Caribbean women have a high rate of participation in the regional labour force and there are indications that this is increasing but this has not translated into less subordination, and greater equity in remuneration levels.

Impact of the CSME Caribbean states are now in the process of improving the movement of labour within the region, a process begun in 1992, with the agreement for free movement of university graduates, artists, media persons, athletes and musicians. This was extended in 2005 to architects and engineers. The ultimate goal of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy is free movement of all Caribbean nationals within member countries at all skills levels.

When achieved, this would integrate the markets of the region and increase the efficiency of the Caribbean labour market through better skills matching and wage arbitration, and ultimately development for Caribbean peoples. The CSME will provide incentives and opportunities for increased human capital accumulation, thus raising labour productivity in the long run.

General speaking, the Decent Work Agenda cannot be obtained or sustained if the critical infrastructure are not in place or allowed to deteriorate without proper maintenance. Hence there must be a framework in place to satisfy the need for reliable electricity, water and telephone; a well maintained road network and other major necessities to facilitate the development and maintenance of decent work.

The final critical element to the institutional framework for the promotion of decent work in the region which I would like to raise is the establishment of functional tripartite bodies to ensure that all sides of the triangle have an imput in decisions taken to deal with the problems and resolving the issues. This is very important.

Conclusion

In concluding, I would say that there is no doubt that decent work is everybody's business for we will all either ride high on its wave or be engulfed in its tsunami. We have a choice to make in light of regionalization and globalization. The rapid increase in violent crime in all of our territories, the barriers being put in place by our territorial friends to the North, the constant conflicts in the East which impact negatively on development; should be enough to cause us to band together for the benefit of our collective survival. Not one of us can do it alone. We therefore must solidly construct our institutional framework to promote Decent Work for our collective survival.

Thank you for this opportunity to share my thoughts and thank you for your kind attention.