Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Mediation the best course in employment disputes

By E Kelvin Hastings- Smith

Published Feb 20, 2012 at 7:00 am

There can be little worse, in the employment context, than a dispute between an employer and employee.

Formerly on friendly terms, an employer and employee often find themselves at odds about rates of pay, the lack of a pay increase, or a job appraisal during which one party has delivered some bad news.

In the latter case, the dispute will normally arise over a performance issue where the employer gives a warning about future performance and there is the likelihood that the employee will be fired if there is no demonstrable improvement in such performance.

The employee is often disgruntled and would otherwise wish to challenge such a threat to his livelihood but is afraid to make a fuss because he fears losing his job.

So, the employee plans to leave his position and the employer loses a valuable employee who has simply had a blip in performance but who otherwise has been a good employee with a tremendous knowledge of the employer's business and customer base.

The key, for both parties, is to determine how the end of their relationship can be prevented.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

No More Fear: Rape Victims Are Coming Forward

The Jamaica Observer

MORE victims of rape and other sexual offences are coming forward to report these crimes.

This turn of events is in stark contrast to what existed up to two years ago when some Jamaicans, particularly girls and women from inner city communities controlled by dons, were afraid of the vicious reprisals that would be meted out to anyone who filed such reports to the police.

The arm of the police force that has been established to probe sexual offences and child abuse has reported that more victims — both in urban and rural Jamaican communities — are taking steps to ensure that the perpetrators of such crimes are brought to justice.

"A lot of persons are coming forward now more than ever to report carnal abuse and rape, which is one of the reasons why we have seen the increase in the reported cases of rapes for last year," said head of the Centre for the Investigation of Sexual Offences and Child Abuse (CISOCA), Superintendent Gladys Brown-Campbell.

"We have more sensitisation programmes going around and people are less fearful now," she said.

While not prepared to divulge the current figures to the Sunday Observer, in keeping with strict Jamaica Constabulary Force protocol, Brown-Campbell attributed the development to the fact that people are no longer afraid of dons.

She said this may be due to the fact that many of these community leaders who traditionally control their community through fear, are being rounded up by the security forces in the campaign which began with the Tivoli Gardens operation in May 2010, mounted in an effort to apprehend accused crime lord Christopher 'Dudus' Coke.

Rethinking the Approach to Crime and Development

By: Claude Robinson

The report documents well known, if somewhat unpleasant, facts: Jamaica has the highest homicide rate in the Caribbean and the third-highest murder rate worldwide in recent years, with about 60 murders per 100,000 inhabitants. Only El Salvador and Honduras have higher rates, with 66 and 82.1 murders respectively per 100,000 people. Also, Jamaica has the highest number of youth convicted of crime in the region.

Direct cost of crime was US$529 million (J$46.5 billion) in 2005; missed tourism earnings was just over US$91 million. These, and other costs, amounted to as much as 3.21 per cent of Jamaica's gross domestic product (GDP).

Jamaica was not alone. "Overall, youth crime is costing Caricom countries between 2.8 and four per cent of GDP," stated the report, as it noted that the number of criminal gangs operating throughout the region is on the rise. Over the past 12 years, gang-related homicide has been increasing in all territories studied, with the exception of Barbados and Suriname.

Latin America and the Caribbean, home to 8.5 per cent of the world population, accounted for 27 per cent of the world's homicides.

The human and material cost of crime in the region is catalogued in the UNDP Caribbean Human Development Report 2012, launched in Port-of-Spain, capital of Trinidad and Tobago, last Wednesday. It was the first time that the UN Development Programme (UNDP) focused its human development lens on the Caribbean.

The report, which draws on the expertise and experience of academics, researchers and policy makers across the region, includes findings from a large-scale survey among 11,555 citizens in Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago, the seven countries in the study.

A key message of the report is that Caribbean countries need to focus on a model of security based on the human development approach, whereby citizen security is paramount, rather than on the traditional state security model, whereby the protection of the state is the chief aim.