WITH THE signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) earlier this year by the Government and the Jamaica Confederation of Trade Unions (JCTU), Dwight Nelson, a vice-president of the Confederation, has emerged as the lead spokesman for the labour movement.
In today's Newsmaker Profile, Earl Moxam speaks with Mr. Nelson about his life and his aspirations.
EM: Dwight Nelson, you are known publicly for your role as a leading trade unionist. But what of the circumstances of your youth; what's the story behind today's public figure?
DN: I was one of those youngsters who grew up in what I would call a lower middle class family. I grew up in Alman Town/Wood-ford Park. The majority of residents there were Chinese. There were a couple teachers in my family and the patriarch of the family was Consie Walters, my mother's only brother, who was involved in the newspaper business. He was a Compositor at the Gleaner Company. And he was the standard of measurement by which we judged the family's success.
I went to St. Joseph's Infant School, then St. Aloysius Boys' school, both run by the Roman Catholic Church, then on to St. George's College in 1959. It's ironic to note that up to that time I never went to school with girls; at St. Joseph's the boys were separated from the girls, St. Aloysius was all boys as was St. George's!
HIERARCHICAL SOCIETY
EM: How do you rate the St. George's experience?
DN: St. George's College was a highly structured hierarchical society, based on class and colour lines; and in order to survive in that society, if you were somebody like me, a little black boy, you had to endure the conflicts which arose from this kind of society, dealing with them in order to achieve. And I think I learnt from that experience the lessons which have served me well in later life.
EM: How conscious were you at high school of national politics?
DN: Very conscious; particularly when we got into the higher forms. One of the things which came to the fore was that there was a very sharp division between those fellows who supported the Jamaica Labour Party and those who supported the People's National Party. George's was made up of a lot of Chinese, and the Chinese in those days were unapologetically in support of Bustamante and the JLP. But George's was also prone to the perception that to support the People's National Party was to establish yourself at a certain intellectual level. And I think a lot of the boys gravitated towards the PNP primarily because they wanted to be regarded as bright young intellectuals.
EM: So where did this bright, young Black boy, Dwight Nelson, find himself?
DN: I never resolved the conflict in high school. The fact is that I did regard myself as one of the bright boys and naturally the tendency was to regard the PNP in a favourable light. I think all of us were prone to that in the upper classes.
EM: How did you end up in the trade union movement?
DN: While growing up in Woodford Park a lot of the guys I knew had gone on to work in industry, and a lot of them had become with the BITU, either as trade union members or as trade union delegates. And Errol Anderson, who was one of the new breed of trade unionists getting into the movement, along with Pearnel Charles, Cliff Stone and Carlyle Dunkley, stated what was called the Young Workers' Council at the BITU. It was a sort of extra-curricular social grouping of young workers represented by the BITU. And I used to follow the guys I grew up with down to the BITU on Tuesday nights, and ended up starting to teach the young workers the art of public speaking. Remember I had recently left St. George's College where I was president of the debating society and so it was easy for me. And of course it was Errol Anderson who suggested that I join the trade union movement.
Then when I spoke to Hugh Shearer the first thing he did was to send me up to Rex Nettleford at the University of the West Indies. And it was Rex who gave me my first grounding in the variables of the Jamaican trade union movement.
EM: What were some of the features of that encounter with Nettleford?
DN: Up to that point I was almost totally ignorant of the Jamaican trade union movement, while being fully conversant with the British trade union movement, having done British Economic History at A'Levels in high school. So it was Rex who first provided me with the detailed information on the Jamaican trade union movement, from its beginning to where we were then. Rex also had a tremendous influence on me, in the sense that he inculcated in my mind that, as a little Black boy, any success that I sought to achieve had to be underpinned by a sound education. He taught me that the way out for people like me was education; and so it was Rex who literally forced me to pursue higher education at the university.
EM: As far as the BITU is concerned, what are some of the more memorable experiences?
DN: When I joined the BITU in 1966 the trade union movement was primarily a blue collar movement; the profile of the membership was sugar workers, banana workers, wharfingers, factory workers. And so I was privileged to be there when the first metamorphosis of the trade union membership took place when the whole profile of trade union membership changed. There was an expansion to include white collar workers, professionals engineers, doctors, accountants, bank managers. I also was privileged to be part of the change in the profile of trade union advocacy. Trade union officers, up to that time, were mainly people who had a maximum of primary school education people who had been delegates who had lost their jobs and the only refuge for them was to join the trade unions as officers. They had tremendous practical experience but with certain limitations. So I was privileged to have been part of the changing of the profile of trade union leadership, which saw the influx of officers with tertiary education, university degrees, social sciences, economics, law.
PRIVILEGED
I'm also privileged to have sat at the table observing and having dialogue with some of our greatest trade union pioneers. I remember sitting on the steps of the IDT for many years with Ken Hill, one of the most articulate of them, discussing our political history and current events. I worked with Michael Manley and that was an experience. Then of course there was Hugh Shearer, and Thossy Kelly.
EM: Tell me about that Hugh Shearer/Michael Manley partnership and what you learnt from it.
DN: It was a relationship built on trust. In fact, Mr. Shearer told me that his first encounter with Michael started when Sir Alexander Bustamante thought that, rather than the two of them working against each other, Michael as NWU and Shearer as BITU, the country and the workers would benefit best if they worked together. And so Shearer said, Bustamante summoned both himself and Michael to his Tucker Avenue home and sat them down and told them that they had to work together.
EM: Out of this coming together, would you say there were significant changes in the quality and confidence They were legendary for their exploits together when they went to the ILO Conferences in Geneva!
EM: Let's fast-forward to the 1985 General Strike, which, at the initial stage, had broad-based support. Can you recall what the specific position of the BITU was?
DN: When that strike started I was actually in Geneva at the ILO Conference, and it was only when I arrived at the airport back in Jamaica that I learnt of the strike. And I immediately headed for the Joint Trade Unions Research Development Centre (JTURDC), of which I was Chairman, and began to have dialogue with the leaders. In the BITU, being led functionally at the time by Lascelles Beckford, there was a very strong agreement in principle with the objectives of the trade movement in calling the general strike.
EM: And what was the main objective of the general strike?
DN: The main objective, as I recall, was to force the Government of the day to accept that the policies they were embarking on vis-a-vis the demands and needs of the workers, particularly those in the public sector, were wrong and needed to be amended. History will show that the BITU supported that position; we never sought to evade any public support of the principles.
EM: But eventually wasn't there some cleavages in the union solidarity surrounding the strike?
DN: Well, I think there were some differences of opinion in the final analysis as to how the strike should end, and in assessing objectives pursuant to bringing closure to it. That was the only point in time when there were differences between the BITU and the other unions. There were unions who felt that such a strike should go on indefinitely and, of course, the BITU recognised that it would have been economically impossible to maintain a general strike indefinitely, and I think some differences arose between us and the other unions at that point.
EM: How do you compare that approach in '85 and the Memo-randum of Understanding arrived at by the unions and the present Government?
DN: In '85 the trade unions were just learning to live with each other. There were still vestiges of the conflicts that used to tear them apart. Today, I can say we have learnt and are better able to sit down and discuss issues and arrive at a consensus and a common approach to perceived problems. This is what has given rise to the MoU. One must understand that the Confederation of Trade Unions is made up of unions of varying philosophical and political convictions. And I think it's a credit to us that, given this diverse base, we have been able to arrive at a consensus approach, and think the MoU reflects that.
EM: Didn't you, yourself, come under some pressure within the councils of the JLP on this matter?
TAKE SOME OF THE BLAME
DN: There were some people who didn't understand. They were consumed by the simple signing of the document and they didn't accept and appreciate what it really represented the social dialogue and social consensus, which would have prevented the 1985 situation. But then again I take some of the blame for this, because, during the discussions with the Ministry of Finance we all agreed that the discussions would be private and classified and there would be no leakage to any source. And I could not brief the members of the JLP, even though I'm a member of the Standing Committee. Had I done so, that would have made it public. And so I take the blame for some of the misunderstanding that members of the Labour Party have laboured under about the MoU. But since that time I've taken time out to address various Labour Party enclaves on the MoU, so I hope they really understand it now.
EM: How much of a risk are you taking with this MoU?
DN: Earl, I think it was Martin Luther King who said that if you have nothing worth dying for, then you have nothing worth living for. And there comes a time in one's life when he has to, on the basis of his total experience, make a decision as to how he can best contribute to the people he represents, and in fact leave a legacy that people will remember. We could not embark again on the path of the '80s and early '90s where thousands of workers were thrown out on the unemployment heap. I couldn't live with myself if I had an opportunity to prevent this and not take action.
EM: The trade union movement, through the Jamaica Confederation of Trade Unions, will shortly be looking to leadership succession, with Mr. Shearer effectively in retirement. You have emerged, certainly through the MoU process, to be the main spokesman for the movement. Will your name be on the ballot for the presidency of the JCTU?
DN: Well, the BITU has submitted my name, so my name will be on the ballot.
EM: And your name will be the only one from the BITU?
DN: My name will be the only one from the BITU.
EM: What's your sense of the feeling of the other unions on your candidacy?
DN: I haven't fully explored that yet, and those who have spoken to me, I would not want to disclose their sentiments. But in the movement we strive for consensus and I'm sure we will have a meeting to discuss all the applications for posts to arrive at a consensus without perhaps having an election at the Congress on May 9.
