Baptiste reaffirms T&T’s dedication to social justice

Min­is­ter of Labour, Small and Mi­cro En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment, Leroy Bap­tiste, has reaf­firmed T&T's ded­i­ca­tion to so­cial jus­tice, de­mo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues, and the De­cent Work Agen­da at the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Con­fer­ence (ILC) in Gene­va, Switzer­land.

Bap­tiste praised the Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al’s Re­port for its in­sight­ful analy­sis of the in­ter­con­nect­ed­ness of jobs, rights, and eco­nom­ic growth, what he termed the "jobs–rights–growth nexus" and em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of de­mo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nance in achiev­ing mean­ing­ful and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment out­comes.

“Democ­ra­cy is alive and well when peo­ple are en­gaged in a process in which they have a voice,” he stat­ed. “A de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­ety is strong when the en­vi­ron­ment fa­cil­i­tates and sus­tains healthy re­la­tion­ships through on­go­ing di­a­logue based on mu­tu­al re­spect and hu­man rights.”

High­light­ing na­tion­al pri­or­i­ties, Min­is­ter Bap­tiste out­lined key el­e­ments of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Work­ers’ Agen­da, which was de­vel­oped through con­sul­ta­tion with the pub­lic. These in­clude:

· Es­tab­lish­ing a liv­ing wage for all work­ers;

· Mod­ernising labour leg­is­la­tion, in­clud­ing the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act;

· Fa­cil­i­tat­ing union recog­ni­tion at state com­pa­nies through tri­par­tite arrange­ments and sup­port from the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­ga­ni­za­tion (ILO);

· Re­vi­tal­is­ing the na­tion­al tri­par­tite body to en­hance di­a­logue with labour rep­re­sen­ta­tives.