A waterlogged section of the St Mary Banana Estate, after Tropical Storm Gustav. The company subsequently announced it was coming out of the banana exporting business, resulting in the loss of job for 460 employees. - Ricardo Makyn/Staff Photographer
THE PROMISE to create "jobs and more jobs" was the campaign mantra of the Bruce Golding-led Jamaica Labour Party's (JLP) during the run-up to the September 2007 general election. But after one year in office, there have been no significant job growth.
On the converse, approximately 2,077 jobs have been cut since January, according to the labour ministry records, and seven thousand more are at the knife's edge.
Many of the the job losses have occurred in debt-ridden public agencies that have been draining the public purse. The Jamaica Urban Transit Company, for instance, sent home 340 workers in a two-phase redundancy exercise during the first half of the year. Air Jamaica's Miami office also sacked 25 workers, while the battered Jamaica Producers Group was forced to quit banana exports and send home 460 workers after another beating from nature -
The number of jobs lost in the public sector doubles what occurred under the People's National Party (PNP) when it took office in 1989. Between February 1989 and October 1990, about 1,000 workers were sacked by the Government. Seven hundred of the workers were employed to the National Water Commission.
economic growth
The Golding administration can plead that global economic conditions have not created the most favourable conditions for economic growth. In July, Prime Minister Bruce Golding blamed the growing world oil and food prices for his administration's failure to deliver the jobs it promised up to the time.
"The world is going through a kind of economic turbulence that it has not seen in 50 years," Golding told journalists at a weekly post-Cabinet media briefing.
"There is no country in the world that I know of which is talking about increased employment this year," he said.
Since July, the labour market has trended downwards worldwide. In September a subprime mortgage crisis caused the failure of several large banks on Wall Street, pushing the globe into a financial crisis. This has forced hundreds of thousands of Americans out of jobs, prompting the US government to provide a $750-billion bailout to the credit-starved financial institutions.
In Jamaica, tourism arrival figures had to be revised downwards while independent credit ratings agency, Moody's Investment Services, placed Jamaica on a review for downgrade due to the pressure being exerted on the country by the ongoing global crisis.
"The present JLP took over a derelict state, heavily indebted, run-down in many areas and over manned state sector with many companies making losses," argues financial analyst John Jackson. "Any one can create jobs, the real issue is how sustainable and meaningful those jobs are."
The difficulties being faced by the country are indeed real, admits People's National Party senator and trade unionist, Navel Clarke, but he contends the Government should have given the process more thought before it made the promises.
promising jobs
"When you think about jobs, you have to think about what jobs you are going to produce," Clarke says.
"I cannot imagine to what extent that people are promising jobs. There have been cutbacks in a number of businesses caused by the world economic situation," he argues. He says the signs were clear from early that world conditions would not be favourable for job creation at home but the Govern-ment did not take heed.
"Alpart (Alumina Partners of Jamaica), about three months ago, cut 150 workers and that was a time when the Government was still saying that the fundamentals of the economy were not bad and that the effects would not reach us immediately," Clarke notes.
But Jackson has a more positive outlook. He says the Government is currently setting the stage with tighter fiscal policies that will pull interest rates down and allow private businesses to expand and provide more employment.
less fat to cut
"In the 1980s, the JLP was forced by the IMF (International Monetary Fund) to cut the Government's workforce, hence it was much slimmer than it was in 2007, hence less fat to cut in 1989-90 than now," reasons Jackson. "The real test has to be when the Government's tight fiscal policy and the very tight monetary policies are eased to see what happens thereafter," he adds.
Jackson suggests that the current administration needs to be in power for at least two years before it can be fairly judged.
gareth.manning@gleanerjm.com
Job cuts in selected entities in 2008
Jamaica Urban Transit Company - 340
Air Jamaica's Miami office - 25
Jamaica Producers Group - 460
Alumina Partners of Jamaica - 150