by Shyama SOONDUR

It?s a matter of being clear in your mind about whom you are working for. Then, you still have to decide which definition to give to the term ?best interest? as regards your clientele. Our union leaders seem quite confused on both fronts.

Annual salary compensation should be indexed only to inflation, they say. Not to productivity. And certainly not to the employer?s capacity to pay. Hence the boycott of the National Pay Council. The latter proposes to use all three criteria to determine future salary adjustments.

It seems there is a rationale behind such a claim. Unionists say that it is not the worker?s fault if inflation rates get out of hand. He is the victim of government?s ineffectiveness in reining in inflation and of the employer?s inefficiency in spurring on productivity.

He is therefore fully entitled to unconditional compensation.

In the face of it, our unionists are working in the best interests of the working class. They are making sure that the worker gets maximum pay for the minimum possible effort. After all, that?s what progress is all about, isn?t it?

Well, not exactly sir. I should say progress is rather about maximum pay for maximum work. Try asking the average worker to do a task that?s not part of the duties officially prescribed to him. I would bet a month?s pay that he would turn you down. Fair enough.

One cannot be expected to do work for which he is not paid. But then, the logic works both ways. If all work indeed deserves to be justly remunerated, all additional pay has to be deserved.

Productive unionism is about ensuring that the worker understands and accepts this simple rule. Modern unionism is about partnering up with employers to achieve better work conditions and opportunities for personal development.

Effective unionism is to see to it that the worker attains lifelong employability. I should say this is what?s in the best interests of the worker. Yet, orthodox unionism comforts him in his view that the employer is totally dissociated from him. It encourages him to overlook the fact that prosperity cannot be for one partner at the expense of the other.

Employers too would be well advised to understand and accept this organic link. Much of the union leaders? orthodox stance is inspired by resentments and mistrusts that dig their roots deep in the past.

No doubt both sides will have to work hard to give the partnership a new lease on life.

The National Pay Council is a new institution.

It will be what the people it works for make out of it. Here is a chance to do away with archaic structures that cripple rather than enable the productive machinery of the country.

Are there any men of good will out there?

Raise your hand please!