Dear Editor,
I recently ran into this article by Dennis E.A. Arrindell in the featured column section of the Curaçao Chronicle newspaper. Many of you may not know that our present Leftist/Marxist labour laws were legislated into law in the mid-seventies by the then Marxist government of Papa Godett, Amador Nita and Stanley Brown of the “Frente Obrero Liberashon” Socialist Party. Below are some excerpts of Mr. Dennis Arrindell’s spot-on assessment of our current high unemployment situation.
“Youth unemployment is an issue that is frequently discussed in formal and informal circles in Curaçao and St. Maarten. I often observe frustrated young people exclaim: “How can I get any experience if nobody will hire me because of lack of experience?” Awkward attempts by politicians and policymakers to address this issue only expose the utter lack of economic logic to which we have let our political discussions degenerate.
The most common proposed solutions are all based on forms of labour protectionism and creating subsidized jobs. This unsensible approach is nothing more than a hidden form of wealth redistribution, as no actual value is created by protecting jobs from effective competition or by subsidizing them directly. Obviously this populist approach does not offer any long term sustainability. Most credible reports on the Curaçao and St. Maarten economy tend to agree about one thing – to promote economic growth, the St. Maarten/Curaçao labour market is in dire need of flexibilization.
Yet we find that in practice the government aims toward the complete opposite and blatantly disregards economic logic in favour of utopian delirium. I therefore find it appropriate to briefly highlight the true causes of youth unemployment in St. Maarten and Curaçao, as unsettling as they might be for some.
Reason 1: Too many of our youngsters have created the habit of focusing only on extracting value out of their employers instead of adding value to the employer.
Reason 2: An inflexible labour market. A culture of encouraging post-colonial victimization from a very early age on, glorifying labour rights and blaming all individual adversities on differences in sex or skin colour has essentially created a large group of highly egoistic and dysfunctional people that are simply not desirable to hire as employees.
The employers unfortunate enough to have hired people from this group soon find themselves in a quagmire of undisciplined and ill-mannered workers that feel offended and discriminated against one way or another whenever their superiors give them orders or even suggestions on the job.
This dysfunctional group cannot easily be fired because of the fact that the bureaucratic “dismissal committee” takes months to review a single case (during which the employer is still obligated to pay wages and socials premiums). But the employers learn their lesson fast; for the next job opening they will be a lot more picky whom they choose.
Reason 3: Supporting trade unions means supporting youth unemployment. In Curaçao and St. Maarten we have a long history of admiring and respecting trade unions. Few people realise that trade unions function primarily as an instrument of labour supply control. By being able to control the labour supply and by limiting competition from non-labour union members, the labour unions essentially attempt to monopolize labour in order to demand higher wages for their affiliated members.
The effect is very simple: Existing jobs are protected at the expense of new jobs (filled mainly by young people). Thusly, supporting labour unions is equivalent to supporting youth unemployment.
Reason 4: Supporting the existence of the minimum wage means supporting youth unemployment. The primary way by which trade unions obstruct competition from new entrants is by pricing lowly skilled labourers (mainly young inexperienced people) out of the market. This is achieved by the minimum wage. The higher the minimum wage, the more expensive the hiring of lowly skilled labour becomes. Consequently, employers no longer hire lowly skilled labour as they become too expensive, but instead will only hire more experienced workers whose productivity is more in line with the minimum wage.
Cynical as it may sound, the existence of the minimum wage is one of the primary causes of youth unemployment and serves no other purpose than to protect the established workers from competition with the lowly skilled workers.
If young people could work for a lower wage, they would at least get a job and gain experience and discipline, which eventually increases their market value. Instead, the government and members of parliament opt to habitually and with a great deal of flamboyancy, combined with misleading propaganda, take pride in raising the minimum wage.
Every time the minimum wage is raised, more lowly skilled people end up being priced out of the job market and are forced to make a living in the shadow economy. Thusly, supporting the existence of a minimum wage is equivalent to supporting youth unemployment. The New Curaçao 80/20 law will further dive the nail in the coffin for investment. Thank you Mr. Arrindell for your accurate and dead-on assessment of our present negative unemployment situation.
Remember, a couple of years ago when the then minister of labour Mr. de Weever made a deal with Sheriff Security to train locals to be security guards. Several thousands of dollars of tax payers’ funds were spent in this populist endeavour. How many locals do you see working as security guards today? The prime minister is coming with another “populist” subsided job scheme again that will raise taxes on gasoline and electricity which is guaranteed to further produce more negative results that will not offer any long-term sustainability for the economy and unemployment.
Peter Gunn
