WE MUST PRODUCE!
Nation News (Barbados) 
Prime Minister David Thompson yesterday opened the 12th Annual Conference and Exhibition of the Human Resources Management Association of Barbados (HRMAB) at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Conference Centre.The conference, focusing on Organisational Renewal: Managing People, Managing Change, has attracted more than 100 delegates. Below, Prime Minister Thompson (third from right), HRMAB president Henderson Williams (second right) and chairman of the HRMAB Industrial Relations Committee, Ed Bushell (right), admire some of the exhibits. In the background is Thompson’s Press Secretary, Natasha King. (Picture by Nigel Browne.)
PRIME MINISTER DAVID THOMPSON has warned that Barbados will stagnate and perish if workers don’t produce more.
“Our workers simply have to become more efficient and more productive or we shall stagnate and perish as a nation,” Thompson said yesterday.
He was the keynote speaker at the opening of the 12th Annual Conference and Exhibition of the Human Resources Management Association of Barbados Inc (HRMAB) at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre, Two Mile Hill, St Michael.
The Prime Minister said employers and employees could not afford to be bitter enemies in this current economic environment and workers needed to change their outlook for improved productivity.
“Employers have an obligation to value and reward the contributions of their most productive employees. And workers need to acquire a stake in the businesses to which they give the best years of their lives,” Thompson added.
He said that some public workers held “certain outdated or politically motivated beliefs.”
The head of Government recommended that workers start to think like supervisors and managers, and engage in advanced planning and pursue increased productivity.
“They cannot forever assume that someone will turn up on a white charger and create jobs for them. They can no longer assume that they can forever sit down on the job. Those jobs are being outsourced to distant lands; and in some cases are being taken by more industrious migrant workers before our very eyes,” Thompson stressed.
He noted that even though the current economic recession was a threat to people’s way of life, it offered opportunities such as identifying niche markets that offered competitive advantage and thinking about “how feasible is it for us to use our better educated workforce to diversify our tourism product, develop our financial services sector, and achieve food security in the short run and food sovereignty in the long run by using modern technology”.
“I believe that the time has come for us to revisit the relationship between the employer and the employee. Can we afford the luxury of perceiving that relationship as a war between two implacable foes? Could we afford to be pulling in different directions in a time of crisis?” Thompson asked.
He noted that it was an issue that had “engaged the minds of our best philosophers and economists” and Barbados had to seriously look at their views and resolve the difficulties. (SR)